April 07, 2014: Avendus and Zodius form a partnership to build a multi-stage technology fund
Big data startups will be happy to know that financial services firm Avendus Capital and Indian tech investor Zodius partner up to build a multi-stage technology fund worth around $500 million dollars.
The primary goal of this partnership is to invest approximately $400- $500 million in Digital or SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) based startups. Their investments will be targeted to include online and mobile markets, as well as SMAC- based opportunities. The funds may be used to restructure and redirect companies towards high-growth markets.
Both the partners have impeccable track recordswith the appropriate business network to develop companies and achieve a planned exit either through an IPO or a strategic sale. Together, they are well positioned to exploit the growing Indian SMAC market.
Mr. Ranu Vohra, Co-founder, MD & CEO of Avendus Capital added,
We have joined hands at a time when digital and SMAC businesses across the world are eliciting exceptional and rightly deserved investment interest. The IPO surge for digital India centric businesses is just beginning and we expect it to create a very high growth environment in this sector.
April 07, 2014: Big data veterans join hands to bring DataRPM to market
Sundeep Sanghavi, founder of Razorsight, an analytics and business intelligence firmalong with ex-colleague Shyamantak Gautam and entrepreneur Ruban Phukan (famous for Ibibo) raised $5.1 million in venture capital funds to bring DataRPM to customers. In mid-March 2014, the company announced the success of its fundraiser led by InterWest Partners and CIT GAP Funds.
These funds will be used to accelerate DataRPMs global go-to-market strategy.
We want to . . . make the process simpler for companies to leverage data
says Ruban. DataRPM has been designed to pull in data from disparate sources, and store the data in a distributed, computational search index. The application does not include any SQL-type query language. DataRPM will be available both on-premise and on the Cloud platform.
DataRPM, headquartered in the US, was launched in 2012. Though the R&D center is located in Bangalore, the sales force operate out of US. The company has acquired 13+ paying customers and is expected to obtain 20 more in the near future. DataRPM focuses on small and medium sized customers, and works on a data-consumption based revenue model.
April 05, 2014: Startup Browntape raises around $1million from Seedfund and Krishnan Ganesh Jai
Browntape, a cloud-based, inventory-management startup raises approximately $1 M with inputs from cloud expert Janakiram MSV. This Goa-based firm, sells a product to manage online orders and inventory to e-commerce merchants.
Right after the funds announcement, Seedfund partner and Browntape board member Paula Mariwala said
We will use the fund for sprucing up technology, expanding its sales and marketing team in various cities, and hiring. Sellers can track the status of their orders and bulk print shipping labels, invoices through Browntape.
Browntapes product is primarily designed for large brands and retailers minimal exposure to scaling sales on multiple online marketplaces. The company, founded by Piyush Goel and Gurpreet Singh in 2012, was part of GSF accelerators second batch of startups.
Merchants can start using Browntape after paying a nominal fee under the condition that they process more than 100 orders a month. Browntapes competitors include Nexus Venture Partners, an order management and fulfillment platform, Unicommerce, and Delhi-based Prima-seller.
Currently, Browntape has 500+ sellers including a multi-retail brand CMM Retail, owned by the Rs 300-crore CMM Group, Shree Ganga Depot, and Organic India.
