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Showing posts with label Raises. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Raises. Show all posts

Friday, June 17, 2011

moneysights Raises $270K From Blume Ventures & Naveen Tewari

We earlier profiled Moneysights, a Bangalore based startup that is trying to change the way an average investor makes decisions regarding investing in Stocks & Mutual Funds. The site’s USP as Santosh (cofounder) shared in detail (in the comment section earlier) is the set of tools that the product provides to an average investor enabling him/her to make informed decisions vis-à-vis investing in financial instruments (Stocks & Mutual Funds).

What we do & do in a unique way is help users take decisions on investments in Stocks & Mutual Funds. an average investor just has 1 question in mind – is this stock/MF good? does it make sense for me to invest in it? we answer these questions in an unbiased way. And in future, we would help the user invest directly from moneysights.

And NO, we AREN’T for people who like to research companies thread-bare. in fact, on the contrary, we are for users who are looking to CUT DOWN time they spend in researching & planning investments. we automate everything for them – right from discovering, planning, deciding & managing. you would notice we don’t have industry reports, balance sheets or P&L statements & plethora of information that adds confusion. we do all the complex math & come out with our views in form of ratings.

Started by ex InMobi employees, Moneysights has raised $270K from Blume Ventures and InMobi founder, Naveen Tewari. The funding was raised in February 2011 but is being made public only now. moneysights raised angel round from Prasad Duvvuri, who has held leadership positions in IBM India & Hewlett-Packard.

The funds are being utilized to grow the team and plug the online transaction platform.

moneysights intends to be a tech-led, low cost, online distributor of financial products (starting with Mutual Funds). Pre-buying, the biggest problem is to identify which product (from 1000s of choices available) is best suited to one’s need and risk profile.

moneysights helps users solve this problem through their smart product recommendation & discovery engine. The recommendation engine creates a portfolio of high performing Mutual Funds that minimizes investment risk & at the same time is well diversified across sectors, market capitalization, etc. You can also customize the recommendations based on your risk profile. During-buying, the product intends to provide a simpler, faster and reliable buying experience.

Post-buying, one of the biggest problem is a clear visibility into one’s investments. moneysights helps users track all their investments at one place and give them actionable insights by intelligently combining user’s data and product performance data from the markets.

Online as a channel of distribution is at early stages – only 5% of them are bought online (on an average,Online sales accounts for 18% of total financial products sales in India). The recent lowering of sales-commissions have put the current high-cost offline distribution channel at a big disadvantage. At the same time, consumers have started adopting internet for researching financial products in a big way. This has led to an aggressive push from the industry side to develop & support online Mutual Fund transaction platforms & keep transaction costs low.

According to a KPMG report, assets under managemnet of Mutual Fund companies are slated to grow to $430 Bn by 2015 which translates into distribution market size of $2.25 Bn, which is what moneysights.com is eyeing through their Mutual Fund offering. These trends combined with the clear tech-led differentiator make moneysights an interesting play.

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Do give moneysights a spin and share your review of the product.

Recommended Read: Interview with moneysights team.


View the original article here

Adepto Raises $300K USD From Blume Ventures And Rajiv Dadlani Group

Mumbai based Adepto has raised $300,000 in its first round of funding from Blume Ventures And Rajiv Dadlani Group.

Founded by two ex-Googlers, Kiran Kumar and Prem Pillai, Adepto Solutions is a product-focused social media application development company. Their flagship product Trol.ly is pitched as the ‘Default Social Commerce Solution’ to the online retailers, helping them improve sales via social networks. Once integrated with an online retailer’s website, Trol.ly works as a completely automated Social Commerce solution.

We earlier profiled Trol.ly on Pluggd.in and the company is also working on products in the travel, media and entertainment verticals.

Like we said earlier, it’s always fun to see Google hiring on Facebook and Googlers building products on Facebook – a sure sign that social media has changed the way marketers look at brand engagement.

What’s your take?

Also, take a look at how top brands use social media.


View the original article here

Daily Deal Site, Koovs Raises Funding From benefitsPLUS

Closed-group ecommerce site benefitsPLUS has invested in Koovs, Bangalore based daily deal site.

benefitsPLUS is a B2B player and works with corporates on their employee rewards/recognition programs. The Delhi based company creates and manages incentive, loyalty, privilege, reward and recognition solutions for brands, HR personnel, employees, dealers and distributors.

benefitsPLUS is foraying into B2C business and recently acquired snowball eRetail services. This investment in Koovs will probably give latter a foot-in-the-door in B2B segment, which is where a few niche deal sites (like open2save) operate.


View the original article here

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Vaatsalya Healthcare Raises $10mn From Aquarius Capital and Seedfund

Vaatsalya is a rural healthcare startup that is building and managing hospitals/clinics in semi-urban/rural areas. The company provides primary and secondary healthcare and basic specialties at each hospital (including paediatrics, gynaecology, medicine, surgery and physiotherapy).

Vaatsalya has raised $10mn in a round led by Singapore-based Aquarius India Fund and Seedfund. The company will use the funds to create a pan-India network of hospitals. SN Subramanya and Vamsi Ramana Ravuri, from the investment advisory firm Aquarius Investment Advisors India, will join and represent Aquarius India Fund on the company’s Board of Directors.

Started by two doctors, Vaatsalya earlier raised Rs. 4 crores from Seedfund in April 2008 and next round was led by Oasis Fund (from Geneva) and Seedfund in 2009.

At the first UnPluggd event, Vaatsalya founder, Dr. Ashwin Naik shared the Vaatsalya story and how the team built this social enterprise just like any other technology startup. Do watch this inspirational video (more context here)



Recommended Read: Seedfund Closes $54 Million Second Fund, To Launch An Incubator [Interview]

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Vidteq Raises Funding From KITVEN

Bangalore based Vidteq has raised funding from KITVEN, a fund contributed by Karnataka State Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (KSIIDC), Karnataka State Financial Corporation (KSFC), Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) and Karnataka Bio-technology & Information Technology Services.

We have profiled Vidteq earlier (VidTeq – Video Maps for Bangalore [Fancy or Need?]) and the company has moved from being a pure B2C player to providing VideoMap based Navigation, Location and Search solutions for Businesses (like hotels/schools/colleges etc).

Started in 2008, the company plans to use the funds for enhancing its sales and marketing team and taking the Cell app to production.

KITVEN earlier invested $0.6 Million in Sloka Telecom.


View the original article here

Flipkart Raises $20mn From Tiger Global [Guess The Valuation]

Flipkart has raised $20mn from Tiger Global LLC in its Series C round and this takes the total amount raised to $31 million.

The funding will be used for marketing initiatives and the company earlier raised $10mn from Tiger Global (and Accel Capital). Essentially, Flipkart needs to go beyond the tier-1 cities and penetrate deeply into tier-2 and tier-3 cities (which is where they need to get the next generation of buyer/sellers hooked onto the service).

We earlier shared the traffic of ecommerce sites in India and eBay clearly leads the race, followed by Homeshop18.

Traffic of Ecommerce Websites In India Traffic of Ecommerce Websites In India


Having said that, Flipkart is making way for a niche startup to come and dethrone it’s (earlier) positioning from being a ‘great site for book lovers’ (circle of life, anyone?).

Is Flipkart an IPO story in making? Or a sweet deal for Amazon to enter India (they have been testing Indian waters) and acquire Flipkart (whose IP lies in backend support system)?
Given that Flipkart isn’t yet profitable (far from being one), the only game is to either hit the public market (so that VCs can exit) or get acquired by a giant like Amazon (so that VCs can exit).
At total fund of $31mn, how much do you think is the Flipkart valuation? Do share ‘your guess’ in the comment section.

At the first UnPluggd event, Sachin Bansal (Flipkart cofounder) shared the Flipkart story on how they didn’t plan to really build a business of this scale (and instead, an affiliate business of sorts).

Do watch the video



Recommended Discussion: Stale Internet Growth in India -Is Offline Promotion the Way to Market Internet Business?

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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Classifieds Portal Quikr Raises $8 Million, Funding Round Led by Nokia Growth Partners

Quikr, a horizontal classifieds player, announced today the completion of a USD 8 million round for Quikr Mauritius (a holding company of Quikr India) led by new investor, Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), and returning investors, Norwest Venture Partners and eBay Inc.

Quikr offers a web and mobile based classifieds platform that addresses a wide variety of local needs in 40 cities across India. The company claims more than 10 million visitors continues to see rapid growth in the number of buyers and sellers on its platform.

Quikr's traffic [4 million UVs/Month] Quikr's traffic-4 million UVs/Month


In the month of March, 2010, Quikr raised USD 6 million (led by NVP) and $4.5 million in July of 2009 (by Matrix Partners and Omidyar Networks). This takes the total fund raised to $18.5 million.

What’s your take on Quikr’s free ad posting model? Is it sustainable? Can they really rely on Google Adsense for monetization? Apart from adsense, the company also charges for lead generation to businesses, but is this model really worth more than $30 million in valuation (assuming Quikr’s valuation to be more than $30mn)?

What’s your opinion?

Must Read: The Broken Online Classified Services in India [And An Opportunity To Create Value]


View the original article here

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

App Development Company SourceBits Raises $10 million From Sequoia Capital and IDG Ventures

App development company Sourcebits has raised $10 million funding from Sequoia Capital and IDG Ventures, in order to expand to US market.

For the year ending March 2011, Sourcebits posted revenues of $6.5 million and one of its app, Night Lamp has been the #2 app in Apple app store and the app itself has gotten revenues of $1 million for the company.

Post this series A funding, SourceBits will expand the engineering and sales team to US market.

Given that app platforms like Android have democratized the global mobile space, expect a lot of Indian companies to go aggressive in global markets.

Recommended Read: The Rise of Mobile Only Internet Generation in India [41% Prefer Mobile To Access Internet]


View the original article here