Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Druva Software, a leading provider of Continuous Data Protection and Disaster Recovery products, announced that it has been selected as a Finalist for Red Herring’s Top 100 Asia award. This prestigious list honors the year’s most promising private technology ventures from the Asia business region.

Druva is one of the fastest growing start-ups. Profitable since 2008, it has over 400 customers across 23 countries, as well as offices in India, Spain and the US. Druva is privately held and backed by Sequoia Capital and Indian Angel Network.

The Red Herring editorial team selected the most innovative companies from a pool of hundreds of Asian companies. The nominees were evaluated on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, including financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy, and integration into their respective industries.

This unique assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the actual track record and standing of a company, which allows Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list an invaluable instrument for discovering and advocating the greatest business opportunities in the industry. Finalists for the award are selected based upon their technological innovation, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition, and financial health.

Druva Software has an impressive list of early customers, including companies like NASA, Xerox, Emerson, Brunswick, and MetLife. In addition to its selection as a Red Herring Asia 100 Finalist, Druva also announced recent customer wins with Merz Pharma, Siemens and Schlumberger.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Span Across IT Solutions Pvt Ltd, which runs an online tax filing service, TaxSpanner, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Indian Angel Network (IAN). The funding by IAN – for a “significant stake” – will be used by the three year old start-up to accelerate its growth and for product development. This is the first round of external funding by the Delhi-based startup.

TaxSpanner’s co-founders include Ankur Sharma, Sumit Grover, Sudhir Kaushik and Manoj Yadav. While there are quite a few online tax filing sites, TaxSpanner says its USP is its privacy policy as it does not engage in cross-selling after obtaining client information.

“What sets us apart from besides our market share and product is the very strong privacy policy and the shield we provide to our users from selling of other financial products in guise of tax filing,” said Ankur Sharma, co-founder, of TaxSpanner. Sharma claims that his  company is one of the largest tax e-filing company in India now.

The tax filing space has already seen some funding action in the past. BCCL has backed First Altus Resources and Networks (Taxshax.com) in an ad-for-equity deal. Accel and Mumbai Angels have funded Fin-e-ssential Infotech India Ltd.(Vegayan), which provides HR and payroll services besides tax filing.

“There are plenty of firms in this segment who have come to us for funding. There is a model that companies are following that after they get the personal details, they start pushing other products like insurance, home loans, etc. There are no leakages with Taxspanner and a strict policy on data privacy,” said Sunil Kalra, a member of IAN who has invested in TaxSpanner.

“IAN is going to overemphasise on the privacy matter and ensure that the company achieves the highest governance standard,” said Sanjay Bansal, an investment banker and another IAN member who has invested in the firm.

Also, TaxSpanner is focusing on getting corporate clientele besides the retail consumers. It has tied up with more than 100 companies with clients like HCL Technologies, Accenture, among others. TaxSpanner also has clients like Citibank and Punjab National Bank, who use its services for their customers. The company now has around 200,000 unique users from hundreds of large employers inIndia.

While TaxSpanner charges from Rs 249 to Rs 749 for its products to retail customer, charges for corporate customers vary.

Sharma adds that there are 30-35 million tax returns filed every year, around half of which are filed by salaried professionals. He adds that the number of filings are expected to increase by 2-3 times in the next couple of years due to factors like changes in tax administration, upcoming direct tax code, increased focus on UID and the investment by the government on the technology framework for taxation. Close to 10-12 lakh salary income tax returns are e-filed currently.

“The Indian government has taken the approach of lowering the tax rates but increasing the base to still achieve more than 20% year-on-year growth  in tax collection. The government is clearly taking the strategy of increasing its reach which is feasible only with scalable solutions like  TaxSpanner,” said Priyank Garg, another IAN member who has invested in the firm.

TaxSpanner currently has offices in New Delhi and Bangalore, with associate offices in cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad and Kolkata.

With this deal, Kalra and Garg of IAN will join TaxSpanner’s board. The founders of Span Across have a unique and extensive domain expertise in the field of software based solutions development, income tax and financial consulting

In what could be a defining milestone in Indian entrepreneurial development domain – Grow VC, the ‘Virtual Silicon Valley’ software platform and world’s first-ever ‘Crowd-Funding’ and interaction platform for startups announced the launch of a local funding network in India, in association with Springboard Ventures – an ensemble of experts dedicated to promoting start-ups. Based around the same model as the existing global funding network Grow VC offers, the Indian local funding network will be the first of many “local” networks the company looks to launch within its wider global network in the coming months. Grow VC’s community platform for entrepreneurs who are looking to grow their early stage startups through the “crowd-funding” has already gathered considerable interest with hundreds of new sign-ups each month and active participation of investors, startup service providers, advisors and entrepreneurs within the online community.

Grow VC works to create a “Virtual Silicon Valley” community and develop new models for more efficient early phase funding. Grow VC just announced the Virtual VC Co-investment Fund to enable VC’s to participate in Grow VC’s seed investments. IndiaCo a leading investment management firm from India is the first partner to come aboard the fund and has committed to invest $5 million to the virtual fund will pave the way for other VC’s to join the fund. The local network in India will be spearheaded by Springboard Ventures creating a tailored network suited to Indian needs and culture.

The launch of Grow VC India will pave the way for many ‘firsts’ in the innovative start-ups domain within the country as pointed out by Satish Kataria – Managing Director at Springboard Ventures. “It would be the first ever single platform to bring together the various entities which revolve around the creation and growth of start-ups while allowing them all to interact and work together with each-other. Besides uniting angel investors and entrepreneurs, this platform offers a first-time opportunity to various experts and consultancies to now come forward and offer their services to start-up community through innovations such as ‘Service Investments’. “ says Satish. This will essentially help enhance the ‘funnel’ or ‘bandwidth’ of support to Indian entrepreneurs bringing into the system not just funders, but experts, advisors and other resources which can help create and grow successful start-ups.

Indeed, as a significant start towards this journey of bringing all key Indian entities together, Indian Angel Network – India’s first and largest network of Angel Investors – having more than 125 members throughout the country, have agreed to associate with Grow VC India – in order to further strengthen and boost Indian start-up eco-system.

“We see that India is very important market for Grow VC, because it has a strong entrepreneurial culture and also nowadays, more investors that are interested in investing in local but also international companies”, says Jouko Ahvenainen Founder & Chairman at Grow VC. “India also has a lot of experience in crowd-funding and other innovative finance models. We have already now seen a lot of Indian users also in our global service.” he adds. Local networks will play an important role in Grow VC’s strategy to build a strong global start-up funding community and the company aims to offer options and freedom to its users allowing them to operate on a local level or operate on a global level too if they choose to.