Tag Archives: funding

Fund-raising Environment in India: by Dev Khare, Lightspeed Ventures – 24 April

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The Pune Open Coffee Club has organized a talk by Dev Khare of Lightspeed Venture Partners on Wednesday, 24th April where he will talk about the areas of interest for venture investors and the current fund-raising environment in India at the seed, early-stage and growth stages. He will also discuss key challenges that he sees many startups in India facing across multiple verticals and growth strategies to overcome some of the hurdles.

About the Speaker – Dev Khare

Dev Khare is at Lightspeed Venture Partners in New Delhi and invests in Internet, mobile and software companies. He currently serves on the board of Dhingana, a leading Indian music streaming service.

As part of Silicon Valley venture fund Venrock, he has served on the boards of, among others, Slideshare (acquired by LinkedIn), Lavante (enterprise SaaS) and Aha Mobile (acquired by Harman).

Dev co-founded Covigo, a mobile application platform company, which was acquired by Symbol Technologies (now part of Motorola) in 2003. He has also been a product manager at CrossWorlds Software (enterprise integration software) and Aditi Technologies (eCRM).

Dev has an MBA from Harvard Business School and tweets at @dkhare.

About Pune Open Coffee Club

The Pune Open Coffee Club (POCC) was started to encourage Startup Founders and those connected to Startups from Pune to organize real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow. At this time (April, 2013), POCC has over 9300 members including investors, lawyers, accountants and freelancers who work with startups.

About this Event

This event is free and open to all. Register here

The event is from 5pm to 7pm on Wednesday 24th April, at Conference Hall no. 6, MCCIA, 5th Floor, ICC Trade Towers, SB Road.

Tech companies in Pune that have recently raised funding

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Here is a list of technology companies that are fully, or mostly based in Pune, and have raised angel, seed, or venture capital in recent times. If you know of any company missing from this list, please leave a comment below so we can update the list.

Companies that raised Series A or better in recent times:

  • TripHobo – online travel planning portal [Kalaari Cap]
  • Helpshift – Mobile SDK for customer support/service/feedback [Intel Capital, Nexus, True Ventures]
  • Swipe Telecom (Makers of cheap tablet PCs) – [Kalaari Cap, Mantra Ventures]
  • SoftTech Engineers – Civil, Construction and Infrastructure ERP Software Company [Rajasthan Venture Capital]
  • Uniken – Enterprise Security Software Products [Nexus]
  • LinguaNext – Localization Software for the Enterprise Software Products Market [Helion]
  • Vaultize – Enterprise File Sharing and Sync [Tata Capital]
  • TastyKhana – Online Food Ordering Service [Delivery Hero]
  • Dhingana – online Indian music streaming [Lightspeed, Inventus, Helion]
  • Pubmatic – Online Ad Optimization Platform[August Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Nexus, Helion]
  • Druva – Enterprise Backup Software Products [Sequoia]
  • Sapience (Previously Innovize Tech) [SEED Enterprises & IAN]
  • FirstCry – Online Baby Products [IDG Ventures, Saif Partners]
  • Krayon Pictures – Animation (makers of Delhi Safari) [Jhunjhunwala, Maneesh Bhandari]
  • ShopSocially – Shopping Social Network [Valhalla Partners]
  • TrueSparrow [Acquired by Fab.com]
  • Cumulus Systems [Acquired by Hitachi]
  • Ever Sun Enervy [Acquired by Techpro Systems]
  • IRIS Energy [Plexus Capital Ventures]

Companies that raised an angel or seed round in recent times:

  • EZMove – Online packers and movers marketplace [Various HNIs]
  • AdSparx – Video ads platform [IAN, Mumbai Angels, GrowX]
  • Function Space – Online Platform for Social Learning / Science and Maths [Nexus]
  • CarIQ – Connecting cars to the cloud for better decision making [Pose Ventures]
  • Ayojak – Online Ticketing and Event Management [HBS Alumni Angels, Blume, Srijan]
  • ShoppingWish.in – price comparison website (by ex-Dhingana co-founder)
  • Simplibuy (Wicfy) Hyperlocal price search
  • AppSurfer (previously DroidCloud) – Try-before-you-buy solution for mobile apps [Vijay Sharma, Alok Kejriwal]
  • BootstrapToday – App lifecycle management SaaS solution
  • ViralMint – Product to create and analyze smail, facebook, twitter, affiliate marketing campaigns
  • Jombay (previously YourNextLeap) [Nirvana Venture Advisors]
  • Sokrati – Digital Marketing Analytics Solution [Inventus Capital]
  • MindTickle – Gamification of Employee Engagement
  • LifePlot (Sofomo) [Fusion Tech Ventures]
  • MaxiMojo (Hotel Software on Cloud) [Mumbai Angels]
  • Rolocule – Gaming company – [Mumbai Angels / Blume]
  • Shantani Proteome Analytics – Services for studying protein structures [India Innovation Fund / Blume]
  • Shashwat Oorja – Renewable Energy (Biogas)
  • Gram Oorja – Rural electrification / computerization
  • Abgenics – R&D in novel therapies for Animal and Human Health
  • Tridiagonal Solutions – Computational Fluid Dynamics software solutions and services

[Older] Sort-of Established Companies who raised significant funding in the
past, or were acquired a while back:

  • QuickHeal – Antivirus Software
  • Airtight – Wireless Security Software Products
  • SEED Infotech – (Training Institute) [Ashmore Alchemy]
  • Vertex [acquired by NTT Japan]
  • Kenati – Home Networking Products [acquired by 2wire]
  • IdeaS – Airline Inventory Optimization Software [acquired by SAS]
  • PACE – Gaming Software [acquired by nVidia]

Pune’s Ayojak (Online Ticketing & Event Management) raises funding

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Online Ticketing and Event Management startup, http://Ayojak.com has just secured funding from HBS Alumni Angels, Blume Ventures, and Srijan Capital. The majority of the investment will be used to launch new products to serve segments such as training & educational institutions, seminars, workshops, lifestyle activities, last minute tickets, adventurous trips and social activities. Also, part of the investment will go towards providing solutions for last-mile services such as entry management and Box-Office.

Here is Ayojak’s description from their press release:

Ayojak.com offers a cloud hosted online suite of event solutions platform offering four pillars of services such as event ticketing/registration software (for ticketing, conference, RSVP, charity), payment processing (online, retail, cash-on-delivery), event marketing and logistics. Since 2009, Ayojak.com has been powering 1000s of events pan India including large scale events such as Live in Concerts, World Series Hockey, Patna Marathon, Joy Run, India Resort Fashion Week and many more.

And about the events being hosted by Ayojak, founder Santosh Panda says:

“We are having significant growth with 425+ events in Q3 FY 2012 vs 381 events in the entire FY 2010-11; with ‘sports’ being the fastest growing event category while ‘business & education’ topped the chart.”

See also NextBigWhat’s coverage of Ayojak’s funding. Includes an interview with Santosh.

Pune’s HelpShift (Infinitely Beta) gets $3.25 million funding

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Pune company Helpshift (previously known as Infinitely Beta), which is focusing on helping mobile app developers do better customer service, has received $3.25 million in funding from True Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners.

According to TechCrunch

Last year, Abinash Tripathy and Baishampayan Ghose founded Helpshift to address what they perceived to be a significantly underserved market in customer service: Mobile. After months of testing their mobile solution, the startup is getting ready to pull the curtains back on its business.

Basically the product is:

[a] mobile-focused, SaaS solution, which aims to be “the first embedded support desk for native apps,” allowing developers to capture device info from their users so that they can troubleshoot problems quicker and more effectively.

and:

To do so, Helpshift provides a native SDK that integrates with mobile apps to offer an “in app” customer experience that remains true to the look and feel of the app, rather than shoehorning its own design into each different mobile UX. Helpshift’s support screens can be customized to match the app’s visual style and is designed, the co-founder and CEO says, to be instantly searchable and available in offline mode, i.e. when a device isn’t connected to the network.

For more details about Helpshift’s product, see also PandoDaily’s coverage.

PuneTech readers would be familiar with Abinash Tripathy and Baishampayan Ghose the co-founders of Helpshift. A few years ago, Abinash started the company, then known as Infinitely Beta, whose first product was the website paisa.com. However, they shut down paisa.com to focus on “qotd.co” last year. Qotd.co has morphed into Helpshift.

VCCircle Event: Meet investors from all over the country: Aug 23

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(Normally, PuneTech does not promote paid events, unless under special circumstances. In this case we are making an exception because we believe that the event is likely to be interesting for tech entrepreneurs in Pune, and also because the organizers have promised a 30% discount for PuneTech readers.)

VCCircle is one of the top forums/platforms in the country for investing, funding, VC activity in startups in India. And, given the amount of activity in the technology startup space in Pune, and the number of techies quitting their jobs starting companies, the need for networking with investors is the need of the hour. VCCircle is organizing a “Investment Forum” at Le Meridien, Pune, on 23rd August.

What to expect at the event?

Approximately 200 participants consisting of established and emerging entrepreneurs, CEOs, PE/VC investors, bankers.

Look here for the detailed agenda.

Who should attend this event?

This forum will give an excellent platform for a POCC/Punetech members to network with the leading investors of the country. These investors will have varied portfolios and will be from all three categories, Angel, VCs and PEs. The badges will be color coded so entrepreneurs can easily decide whom to talk to.

The agenda will cover what investments have happened in Pune already, which sectors are seeing lots of investments, and which sectors are expected to see more activity in the future. There will be special enclosed speed pitching session with investors for selected companies.

How much does it cost?

It costs Rs. 6000 for Entrepreneurs/Companies/Startups. However there is a 30% discount for PuneTech readers. Use the discount code VCCPE30. (If you are a banker/Investor/Consultant, it will cost you Rs. 9000. You can still get the PuneTech discount – use the discount code VCCNPE30.)

Registration details are here. For questions, other details, or group discounts contact register@vccircle.com or call Kanika / Sandeep at 0120-4171111.

Click here for more details of the event

Pune based RainingClouds (AppSurfer) get 1cr Angel Funding

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Pune based software startup RainingClouds Technologies has just raised Rs. 1cr in angel funding from Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of One97 Communications. RainingClouds makes AppSurfer, which allows people to access any android app from any browser.

The funding happened as part of the Finale of the Super Angels show of ET Now. (We’ll update this post with a link to the video of this show once it appears on YouTube.) RainingClouds got into the Super Angels show as a result of being one of the winners of the PuneConnect 2011 event organized by PuneTech along with Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP) and Pune Open Coffee Club. (There, AppSurfer is referred to by its older name, DroidCloud).

Here is a description of DroidCloud from PuneConnect 2011:

DroidCloud allows users to try and use Android apps from any desktop web browser. Normally, applications intended for Android phones cannot be used by people who do not have an Android phone. DroidCloud gives every user a virtual Android phone in the cloud that they can use to run apps. This is useful for app developers to demo apps to clients, app publishers to show demo of apps to potential customers and users, and different teams in large organizations to collaborate on apps.

The DroidCloud team consists of Aniket Awati, Ratnadeep Deshmane, Amit Yadav and Akshay Deo, all techies from Pune.

Fab.com (co-founded & developed in Pune) raises $40 million

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Fab.com, an online ‘deals’ website specifically targeting ‘design’ items, and co-founded by True Sparrow Systems, has just closed a $40 million round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Fab.com started off as Fabulis, a social network for the gay community, but pivoted to a daily design deals site.

This is the second Pune-startup by Jason Goldberg, co-founder and CEO of Fab.com. Earlier, he had started social|median, again with True Sparrow Systems of Pune, and this had a successful exit to Xing in less than an year.

In general, Jason Goldberg seems to have perfected the art of co-founding a startup with a development team in fully in Pune. This is not outsourcing in the regular sense of the word; he works with Pune based True Sparrow to build a dedicated team for his startup, he works very closely with the team, involving them in the conceptualization, architecture and design of the product, and spends one week out of every 6 in Pune. For more details on how he does this, check out this PuneTech post from his social median days: How social|median is Developed out of Pune

In any case, the full article about Fab.com’s funding is here

Pune’s InnovizeTech receives Rs. 4.5cr funding from Seed Enterprises

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Pune based startup, InnovizeTech software, which makes productivity measurement software, has just announced that it has closed a Series-A investment of Rs. 4.5 crores from Seed Enterprise. Seed Enterprise is a newly established fund focusing on software products in emerging markets. It has been started by Mitesh Bohra, Avinash Sethi, and Siddharth Sethi (previously co-founders of InfoBeans). Innovize had previously received $350k in angel funding from Indian Angel Network.

Innovize Tech has built a software product, called Sapience, that helps companies measure the exact amount of time spent by employees in various work related activities. When Sapience is installed on employee PCs, it automatically figures out what work was done, by whom, for how long, and for what purpose. It produces reports that highlight gaps and deviations from pre-determined goals. The basic idea is to provide managers with data that can be used to drive efficiencies, detect underutilization, and compare with industry metrics. Sapience protects privacy of individual employees by only providing aggregate data and trends for teams > 10 employees in most cases.

Here’s their pitch from the press release:

Sapience’s key USP is that it delivers automated visibility into Enterprise Effort. It is cloud based, though an on-premise option is available for large enterprises. Their client portfolio is expanding rapidly, and currently includes large and medium IT Services firms like Zensar, product ISVs (IDeaS, Bio-Analytical Technologies), KPOs (SG Analytics), and Engineering Services companies such as EnVenture and Excelize.

Innovize has been founded by Shirish Deodhar, Madhukar Bhatia, Swati Deodhar, Hemant Joshi – Each has 25+ years of technology and leadership experience in US and India. They are Serial Entrepreneurs with 2 previous successes (Veritas Software India, and In-Reality (sold to Symphony)) in outsourced product development. Shirish, Madhukar, and Hemant were first together in Veritas Software

Innovize is also one of the companies to get multiple honours in the PuneConnect 2011 event recently held in Pune, (which PuneTech helped organize).

Read the full press release about this funding

Pune-based Druva get $12M in Series B from Nexus/Sequoia – This time its official

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Pune-based Druva software, which makes enterprise backup software, has just cosed a $12 million round of funding from Nexus Venture Partners and existing investory Sequoia. In April 2010, they had raised $5 million from Sequoia and the Indian Angel Investors.

This funding is going to be used by Druva to make a strong push into cloud-based backup. Cloud infrastructure for a bandwidth and storage intensive like backup can be a significant expense, and of course, sales and marketing too.

A few weeks back a partially inaccurate version of this story had been leaked by Economic Times and was reported by PuneTech, but we “withdrew” the story after Druva called us up and let us know that it was premature to talk about it. Talking about a company’s funding round before everything is finalized and the money is in the bank is dangerous for a number of reasons including:

  • Funding is a tricky thing and there are no guarantees until the money is in the bank. Many things can, and do go wrong. One bad day on the stock market can cause VCs to reconsider any deals that are not final.
  • From the time the startup received a term-sheet from the VC until the deal is finalized, there is usually a no shopping clause which prevents the startup from talking about the details of the deal with anybody else. This is to ensure that the startup does not use this offer to try and create a bidding war between VCs. Hence, if the details leak out the VCs might feel that the startup is trying to violate the no shopping clause
  • Most importantly, if word leaks out that a VC is funding a company for amount X, then in next few days is is possible that the VC’s contacts in the industry (probably other VCs) keep saying “Why are you paying X? I don’t think it is worth more than Y?” and this can cause the VC to reconsider the deal. This is very dangerous for the startup.

This time however, the news is official (and is actually better than the deal reported by Indian Express).

As for what Druva does exactly, and why it is one of our favorite Pune companies, just read the previous article, which had a bunch of links. Here are some other interesting tidbits about Druva:

  • “Druva’s disruptive innovation reduces the storage footprint and bandwidth requirement for backup by orders of magnitude compared to other industry solutions” -Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Nexus
  • Druva, founded in 2007, has amassed more than 750 customers and protects more than 300,000 endpoints (i.e. servers, laptops, PCs) worldwide
  • InSync’s global, source-based deduplication reduces bandwidth and storage by 90 percent while providing 100 percent accuracy for Microsoft Outlook and Office applications

Here’s the full press release regarding this news

Pune Startup YourNextLeap.com get Series A Funding

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Pune based startup, YourNextLeap.com, whom we covered last November as a company to watch, has just announced that they have received Series A funding from Nirvana Venture Advisors.

YourNextLeap is a website targeting students and provides guidance on what university they can/should apply to after engineering, or after 12th std. They have online tools like University Suggestor and College Suggestor which help students decide which university/college to apply to, to maximize probability of getting admitted, and Branch Suggestor helps students choose which branch they would do well in.

With this round of funding, Amit Patni, from the Patni Family and Rajan Mehra, formerly the Country Head for eBay in India, join the Board of Directors. Nickhil Jakatdar, CEO of VuClip and Alok Kejriwal, CEO of Games2Win are already on the Advisory board of the Company.

See full press release