Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

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

Komli Media, Asia Pacific’s leading digital media network, has raised $15 million in funding led by Norwest Venture Partners (NVP). Existing investors, Nexus Venture Partners and Helion Venture Partners, also participated in this round but DFJ hasn’t. The additional capital will be used to fuel aggressive expansion throughout India and across its key markets in Asia Pacific. The Company will further invest in its two core businesses – the Digital Media Network and the Audience Measurement unit – which are experiencing significant growth.

This is the company’s third round of financing – the first was in January 2008, when it raised $7 million, and the second in July 2010, when it raised $6 million.

Last year, Komli Media began its expansion across Asia Pacific by acquiring PostClick, Australia’s leading site representation firm. In October the Company further expanded to international ethnic markets with its acquisition of Indoor Media. With capabilities across brand solutions and performance marketing, Komli Media is Asia Pacific’s leading digital media network.

Amar Goel, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Komli Media, said, “We were drawn to NVP because it is a global, top tier investment firm with deep domain knowledge in the online advertising sector. Furthermore, NVP’s powerful network of relationships in India and abroad will be of great value to Komli Media as we expand our offerings and services to other markets. We look forward to closely partnering with NVP to take our company to the next level.”

Komli Media’s digital media network represents more than 2,000 websites today, including sites such as Facebook, Babycenter and Bloomberg, reaching more than 45 million unique users across a number of categories and regions. The company also owns and operates ViziSense, India’s first and leading online audience and ad measurement platform. ViziSense is now being launched in Australia to tap the growing needs for cutting edge audience measurement from digital marketers and publishers.

Niren Shah, Managing Director, NVP India, joins Komli Media’s board of directors as part of today’s announcement. He commented, “NVP is excited about the potential of early and late stage Internet investments in India, and Komli is the perfect addition to our robust global Internet portfolio. Komli Media’s highly experienced management team, significant level of technical expertise, and strong operational and financial performance made our decision to invest in the company an easy one. We look forward to working with Komli Media and supporting the team as it innovates in unique ways that will cement its position as a market leader in the rapidly evolving Indian and Asia Pacific digital market.”

Prashant Mehta, Chief Operating Officer of Komli Media added, “As Komli Media expands its core operations in the fast growing Asia Pacific markets with a digital market size of more than USD 3 billion, we plan to leverage this funding to double our investment in our key products and platforms as well as scale our organization across sales and marketing.” He further added, “As we make these investments, we look forward to thought leadership and strategic guidance from the NVP team.”

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Letsbuy, a New Delhi based e-commerce company founded by Hitesh Dhingra and Amanpreet Bajaj  in mid 2009 has raised an investment of $6M in series A round from Helion Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Tiger Global.

LetsBuy.com is an online retailer of consumer electronics, telecommunication products, laptops and computers peripherals, they deliver goods through out India. Earlier Hitesh Dhingra was the co-founder and Business Head of online advertising firm Quasar Media Pvt Ltd and Tyroo Media.

“LetsBuy.com in on the fast-growth path and the VC funding from the leaders in the space will only spur us on. The funds would be deployed in strengthening customer service, technology and supply chain processes,” said Dhingra, Founder & CEO, LetsBuy.com.

“India has witnessed tremendous growth in e-commerce and Letsbuy has been part of that growth. The team has the vision to have identified a very compelling opportunity and the execution skills to deliver to it,” said Ashish Gupta, Managing Director, Helion Venture Partners.

“The LetsBuy.com team has the vision and the business acumen to identify opportunities and make them stepping stones towards growth. In the process they present the best offerings to their customers and meet the goals chalked out by the partner investors. The strategy and plans match those valued by the Accel Partners team,” said Prashanth Prakash, Partner, Accel Partners.

If you compare the online traction of Infibeam, Futurebazaar and Letsbuy, letsbuy is catching up with Futurebazaar

Interestingly Letsbuy compete with Flipkart (also a portfolio company of tiger global and Accel Partners) in category like ‘Mobiles’.

I am impressed with wide range of payment options available for users at Letsbuy for order fulfillment, except for payment through mobile they have covered everything -

e-commerce space in India is very big enough to sustain and grow multiple payers. Online retailer with superior customer service, competitive pricing and quick delivery time will be successful.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Exclusively.in, a periodic sale portal offering high end products – designer wear, home decor, fashion accessories has raised $2.8 million in funding from Accel Partners and Helion Venture Partners.

Exclusively.in caters to NRI audience in US which doesn’t mind shelling premium for the right product not available in US. Their working model is quite simple, products are source from India mainly around NCR region and then products are shipped to users based out of US. Soon they plan to start shipments to countries like UK and Canada.

Exclusively.in deals in desginer products and accessories like jewelry, handbags, shawls, desginer sarees, handicrafts, paintings and is planning to expand to verticals like travel. Sunjay Guleria is CEO and co-founder and Sonny Caberwal is COO and cofounder of this startup which was launched in june. Exclusively.in operates from two offices – New Delhi and New York.

At a first glance i felt product pricing is quite steep but may be for an NRI it isn’t much, user has to pay an additional charge of around $40 for the shipment.

Accel India has been bullish on e-commerce players and this strategy has paid off well, their investments in Flipkart and Myntra are sure to give them hefty returns, Helion has been backing internet ventures and with recent listing of MMT and their investments in Redbus they doesn’t want to miss emerging opportunities in Internet space.

It will be interesting to see if Fashionandyou plans to cater to NRI audience in near future and pose a competition for Exclusively.in

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Komli media an online Indian ad network has raised $6M from existing investors – Nexus Venture Partners, Helion Venture partners and DFJ.   The funding will be used to accelerate the company’s overall growth including its expansion across Asia Pacific.

In 2007 Komli has raised $7m from the above mentioned VC firms.

The funding will aid the company to continue investments in the following core businesses:

• Premium Brand Solutions - Komli Media will continue to build on its already strong set of exclusive high quality publisher relationships across the region.  The company will also invest in bringing the next generation of video, mobile and brand measurement solutions to the market

• Performance Marketing – The company will invest further in its core performance optimization platform to help improve ROI for marketers and increase yields for publishers

• Audience Measurement – The company will continue to increase its panel size and bring more audience measurement solutions that will deliver significantly greater data and insights to marketers and agencies

“With India’s Internet user base growing over 50 million and increasing broadband penetration, we see an acceleration of growth in the digital advertising market. The largest brand advertisers in India are now demanding a much higher share of digital and social media in their overall marketing plans. We will continue to make India a top priority of our growth plans”, said Prashant Mehta, Chief Operating Officer of Komli Media.

Komli last month acquired Australia based PostClick a leading site representation firm, covered here.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com