Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Kaizen Private Equity LLC, India’s first private equity fund focused on $86 billion education sector in India is leading a Rs 24 crore or $4.6 million round in the Bangalore based Ace Creative Learning Private Limited.

ACE provides training and guidance to students preparing for various engineering and medical entrance examinations. It previously raised funds from Accel partners, Catamaran and few angel investors for its Series A round of investment, who will be funding for the current around as well. Kaizen will also be appointing a nominee on the board of the company.
Ace creative learning plans to expand beyond Karnataka and Kaizen Private Equity are supporting their growth plans. Ace has also shortlisted a few location to spread over the next couple of years. Masterkey Holdings, the Bangalore based boutique investment bank has been sole advisors to Ace learning.

Ace learning has been providing comprehensive training for the IITJEE, AIEEE, AIPMT, FMS and NTSE for more than 10 years since its inception in 1998. The company also offers an online platform for students to attend lectures and study at their homes.

Dr Ganpathy Sridhar, the founder of Ace creative learning obtained his B. Tech from IIT Kharagpur in 1989 and later completed his PhD from The Johns Hopkins University. Today, team Ace consists of 450 members including experienced faculty members who are graduates from the IIT, experienced retired professors from reputed institutes and doctorates from India & the US.A dynamic team of professional deliver high quality education across various teaching environment.
“With education as our focus, we have been looking for high-end companies with a differentiated edge. Ace has doubled its IIT JEE ranks and increased AIEEE ranks by 50 per cent last year, alongside ensuring students are also receiving a balanced preparation for their school board examinations. This success in ranks is because of the company’s ability to attract good students and more effective teaching methodology,” quoted Sandeep Aneja, Founder and Managing Director of Kaizen Management Advisors on joining hands with ace learning private limited.

In June 2011, Kaizen closed its maiden fund at Rs 400 crore. With a keen focus on education sector, it invested RS 25 crore ($4.5million) in Altus Learning pvt ltd, a company providing management and other service form playschools to K-12 segment.

Previously, Kaizen has invested in the corporate day care services firm Your Kids ‘R’ our kids (India) Pvt ltd. It also funded the distance education provider Universal training solutions (UTS) a few years ago. Ace creative learning is the fourth disclosed investment by this education focused investment company.

-Hitesh, vcBytes

SureWaves Mediatech, a Bangalore based startup operating in the digital media technology space has received Rs 10 Cr from India Innovation Fund (IIF) & Accel Partners. IIF is  It is IIF second investment

Founded in 2006 by Rajendra Khare, Tapan Kumar and Anant Kansal, Surewaves offers the ‘Surewaves media grid’, an integrated advertisement aggregation, content delivery, network management, media planning and reporting platform. SureWaves is also active in the Digital Display Networks business.

The product addresses the Spot TV market and enables geo-targeted advertisements on national and regional cable channels.

IIF is promoted by Nasscom and IKP Knowledge Park, IIF offers investee companies the benefit of topnotch mentoring with advisors such as S Ramadorai, TCS vicechairman , and Kiran Karnik, former president of IT trade body Nasscom, who are on the panel. Start-ups also have the opportunity to work jointly with the marquee companies who are backing the fund.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Accel India has picked up stake by investing an undisclosed amount in New Delhi-based hospitality software firm HMS Infotech, which provides the Hotelogix software to run hospitality businesses. Hotelogix is a SaaS platform which offers  pay-as-you-go option for hotels of all sizes.

Hotelogix, is an ’Easy to Adapt & Simple to use’ solution that offers all that you might ever need as a Hotel Management Software to run your Hospitality Business smoothly. Hotelogix is targeting small and Mid-sized hotels.

Hotelogix covers the full spectrum of Hoteleiring tasks, both in terms of streamlining the internal operations, and enhancing your business reach to enable higher revenues & growth.

Hotelogix has an impressive feature, prominent ones are -

• Supports working in multiple currencies and in multiple time-zones.
• Unlimited point of Sale terminals to manage Restaurants, Spas, Room Service.
• Comprehensive property management system and frontdesk interface.
• Enterprise level auditing supported
• Robust reporting and revenue management
• Integration with GDS/IDS

Hotelogix is highly affordable platform. They have three pricing plans with plans ranging from $2.99 per room per month to $2000 one-time payment plan. The website is very informative and very intuitive and hotel executives can get started in less than 10 minutes. Hotelogix is gaining traction in the APAC, US & European Hotels.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Exclusively.in, a private flash sale site has raised $16M from Tiger global, Accel partners India and Helion Venture Partners.  As of now the company has been targeting NRIs living in US and sells Indian attires such as saris, tunics, jewelry and very traditional wedding gowns etc.

Exclusively.in plans to utilize the fund in expanding their distribution network, doubling its workforce. Exclusively.in plans to become an international player in this space and will expand its flash sale site to 50 countries, 30 countries will be covered by this year end. Their deliveries will start to UK from the mid week of June. Exclusively.in will be catering to Indian audience from the 3rd Quarter of this year.

Like FashionandYou Exclusively.In sends out a daily email containing the several styles it has for sale. Members who subscribe to the email are able to purchase the items at a discount until the inventory is gone.

Lets have a look at their US and Worldwide traction –

Country Worldwide Unique visitors (estimated cookies) 120K 130K Unique visitors (users) 77K 92K Page views 2.1M 2.2M Total visits 260K 270K Avg visits per cookie 2.1 2 Avg time on site 8:40 8:00

Exclusively.in was founded in mid 2010 and have offices in NewYork and New Delhi currently. Exclusively.in has raised $2.8M in Nov 2010 from Helion Venture partners and Accel Partners.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

BabyOye, an e-commerce startup in babycare products has raised $2.5M from Accel partners and Tiger Global. Primarily investments will be utilized in hiring people, expand its supply chain, build warehouses and increase product range.

BabyOye started by husband-wife duo – Arunima Singhdeo and Sanjay Nadkarni, an ex Infoedge executive who understands Indian online space quite well. Babyoye has tied-up with over 80 brands and offers a range of over 4,000 products, including Pampers diapers, Chicco food, Johnson’s skincare range. BabyOye certainly wants to make a mark in this multi billion dollar market.

BabyOye also offers products for new moms, making it an shopping platform for both new born babies and new mom.

Its been barely 6months they started BabyOye and managed to raise handsome series A funding from reputed VCs is just unbelievable. One of the main competitor for BabyOye is Coimbatore based Hushbabies.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com