World's No. 1 venture capitalist Promod Haque of Norwest Venture Partners is in talks with five software product companies in India for funding.

"We are talking to four-five product-centric companies in India for funding. These companies are in telecom and enterprise software product space," Haque, Managing Partner of Norwest who was named top venture capitalist on the annual Forbes Midas List for 2004, said.

A few months back Norwest had invested in Bangalore-based Epiance. "Epiance was a consultancy and services company and then it went on to develop a product. It has ten people in the United States and 90 doing development work in India. We are looking for more such companies in India," he said.

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Norwest also has plans to bring together people with right product background and float a company to serve the US market.

"We have an idea of what the US market needs. We would bring together people with right product background and float a company. It will do development work in India while the CEO and marketing people will sit in the US. Work on this idea is on," Haque said.

Norwest has not earmarked any funds for India. The company does not decide on funding the companies on the basis of geography but opportunity, he said.

Admitting that product companies in India are small and lack the resources to compete globally, Haque said the Norwest name carries a lot of respect with our funds and backing they should do well.

Haque is in India with seven companies that Norwest  had funded for meeting with potential clients. Of the seven companies, three -- Veraz, Cast Iron and Virtela -- have been founded by Indian Americans. Some of them get their development work done from India.

"These seven companies have disruptive technology. They will be the giants to tomorrow. They have our backing and lot of sustaining power. We want to expose Indian IT services and telecom companies to their technology so that they can leapfrog the competition," he said.

"India is the fifth largest telecom market in the world in next five to seven years it will be third largest. Our mission is to introduce Indian telecom companies to the new technology so that they are not saddled with old technology from existing suppliers," Haque said.

Norwest will also introduce the seven companies to big outsourcers in India like Infosys, Wipro, HCL and Satyam. "In the last three years Indian software services companies grew well because companies in the US wanted to cut costs. Now the US economy has started looking up and all cost savings that were possible have been wrung," he said.

"The next phase of growth will be not on costs but on technology. We want to tell Indian outsourcers that they can leapfrog competition using the technology the seven companies have on offer," Haque said.

He said the response of companies in India to the new technologies has been encouraging and some of them are already working with big companies in telecom and IT space.

Apart from outsourcers Norwest will introduce the seven companies to old generation and new generation companies. "We want to tell them how strategic is new technology to their growth."

Haque has already been to Mumbai with the companies and after Delhi his next stop is Bangalore and Hyderabad.