Index Ventures raises $584M growth fund
Index Ventures, one of Europe’s high-profile venture capital firms, had raised €400 million fund for investing in companies that are more mature than start-ups.
It is the London-based firm’s first so-called “growth fund,” and follows the move by several other investors, including Sequoia Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Ignition Partners to focus on later stage opportunities. Index will use the money for both technology and life science companies, but retail and clean-tech companies will also be considered.
So far, Index has been known for backing companies such as Skype, MySQL and Last.FM very early in their development — all companies that yielded significant returns after being bought.
The new fund, which will complement the firm’s investments into seed companies, will earmark between €20 million and €50 million for each of the investments. The backed companies will be European, though could also be Eastern Europe orU.S. companies planning to expand in Europe.
In a statement the firm sent out over the weekend, Index said it has hired two new partners to help Index partner Guiseppe Zocco with the new effort: Dominique Vidal (pictured here), former chief executive of Yahoo Europe and co-founder of Kelkoo; and Guido Magni, former head of medical science in the pharma division of F. Hoffman-La Roche, who will work on health care deals.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
