Foreign Venture Capital Firms in a Cross-Border Context: Empirical Insights from India

Syndication or co-investment is a potent way of pooling resources among peer Venture Capital (VC) firms. This is even more vital for Foreign VC firms (FVCFs) when investing in destinations that are geographically distant from their countries of origin. Although FVCFs are relatively abundantly endowed in terms of financial capital, they are distinctly disadvantaged in terms of their social capital when investing in geographies that are distinctly different in terms of their institutions, norms, and culture from their own. One of the ways in which FVCFs overcome this impediment is by investing in human resources that serve as a bridge between their financial and social capital. Accordingly, the primary aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the resources of FVCFs and their syndication intensity. Using the technique of logistic regression, we arrive at several interesting findings. FVCFs with a greater proportion of investment executives with prior founding experience in India and those with lower proportions of professionals of Indian origin demonstrate lower syndication intensity. Similarly, the syndication intensity diminishes with the increase in size of the investing team. FVCFs with greater fund size demonstrate a lower need for syndication. Greater endowment of social capital as proxied by the age of the VC firm is seen to enhance the syndication intensity.