Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Jasper Innovative Marketing Solutions, parent company of Snapdeal has raised $12M from Nexus Ventures Partners and Indo US Ventures in series B round. Jasper aims to become mini Groupon, its expanding agressively in different countries, it has already operations in 5 countries – Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives and Singapore and plans to acquire more players in APAC region. Primarily investment would be utilized in expanding the operations in different countries.

At present Snapdeal offers dicsount coupons across 10 cities in India and about 40 cities they offer special discount coupons from e-commerce companies like tradus.in

Snapdeal has earlier acquired Bangalore based Grabbon, one of the early players in group buying space.

Lets have a look at the monthly traction of Snapdeal -

Undoubtedly Snapdeal traction looks very impressive. Snapdeal claims to have 1M users actively buying its discount coupons.

Beside Snapdeal, Jasper also runs and operates babybox.in, moneysaver prime.

Babybox.in is a parent informative portal and it aims to become a platform for hospitals, baby care brands to interact with parents. Intent is clear to form a database of parents which can be leveraged. Babybox has tie up with companies like Hushbabies which sell baby care products online.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Myntra, India’s largest online personalization company has forayed into direct selling of goods. Last week it introduced ‘Sports‘ category and its prominently displayed in their homepage. Now user can buy sports shoes, track pants, t-shirts etc from makers like Reebok, Nike, Puma etc. and yes you cannot personalized them for which Myntra is known for. Recently they closed $14M investment from global PE firm Tiger Global at a highly favorable valuation.

Is Myntra slowly and steadily transforming itself into from a boutique retailer to plain e-commerce player? But question arises why drifting away from its product mojo. Has the customization and personalization model isn’t scaling? or Is Tiger global inclination towards e-commerce space( They recently invested $10M in Flipkart and LetsBuy) making them shift gears and become an online seller.  Simple n direct selling will certainly boost the revenue.

With the introduction of this new category, they will compete with players like Yebhi(formerly bigshoebazaar).

Myntra has a good monthly traction which may have propelled them to foray into direct selling, lets look at the monthly traction -

Lets wait and watch this space, e-commerce is certainly hotting up in India.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Apalya Technologies, a leader in interactive, on demand Mobile TV services in India, has raised USD 7.5 million in Series B funding. Apalya plans to use the funds to broaden its portfolio of services and technology platform to leverage the vast mobile TV opportunity being presented by the upcoming large scale rollout of 3G services in India.

The investment in Apalya was led by Bangalore based IndoUS Venture Partners (IUVP), a leading venture capital firm. IUVP is a first time investor in Apalya Technologies. With this investment Ms Vani Kola will take a board seat in Apalya Technologies.

“With its unique Mobile TV Technology, Apalya is already making waves in the mobile VAS industry in India, the fastest growing mobile market across the globe. The widespread launch of 3G services in India has the potential to make the mobile screen a dominant live streaming based infotainment and advertising platform with Apalya as the central player,” says Ms Vani Kola, Managing Director, IndoUS Venture Partners.

Existing investors IDG and Qualcomm also participated in the Series B financing thus affirming their faith in long term exponential growth of Apalya. Apalya’s Mobile TV viewership has grown to 4 Million Subscribers after receiving the first round of investment.

During the same period, Apalya partnered with more than 100 television channels including Discovery, Disney and Sony. Apalya also tied up with Reliance communications and Tata Teleservices for delivering mobile TV solutions for their 3G services launch.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

VenSat, a Hyderabad based media and entertainment startup which offers a wide range of world-class creative services in 2D, CGI, VFX, and 2D-to-3D conversion has raised $5M from Bangalore based Indo US Venture Partners (IUVP).

VenSat had completed 10 projects since its inception in December 2009, including VFX for blockbuster films- Robot and Dabangg. It currently has six projects in hand, including four films.

Vensat was launched in Dec 2009 and was founded by ex Satyam BPO honchos - Venkatesh Roddam and Satyanarayana Mudunuri, company was christened with first three English alphabets in their respective names.

Vensat operates from two centres in Hyderabad and Chennai employing 30 and 80 people respectively.  Looking to establish a presence in the $500-billion entertainment market in the US, the company today announced its US arm, VenSat America, which would be led by Ken Silverman, CEO and president, and John Follmer, vice president and chief operating officer.

The company recently delivered work for a full-length animated motion picture for a major European entertainment group and all VFX for ‘Land of Astronauts’, for Studio Cineville, in the U.S., which was premiered and showcased at the Montreal Film Festival and at the recently concluded Mumbai Film Festival.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Monarch Innovative Pvt Ltd. is a leading global solutions provider of application specific software and high density hardware serving the needs of the Broadcast, Video and Photo Imaging Industry has raised INR 25 Cr. from Bangalore based Indo US Ventures (IUVP).

Monarch Innovative is started by Viren Satra, a videographer and photographer in 1996 and is now looking to aggressively scale its business.Monarch develops indigenous solutions that assure innovative excellence, unique user-friendliness, value, and support above all others.

Press Release

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MITPL provides virtual studio, online graphics systems and signal converters for broadcasters and cable operators. It has linear and non-linear (NLE) video editing & solutions for the video segment.

It also offers photo book designing and image editing software solutions to the photo market through its well known Karizma brand. Monarch is the market leader in the Indian wedding video editing segment.

Viren Satra, CMD of MITPL commented, “Our forthcoming NLE solution is ready to revolutionize the market. We are now all set to expand our reach globally. Broadcasting is an extremely promising market in the coming years and we are aggressively investing in it. We have
identified HD as the upcoming technology platform and we have proactively created HD solutions in line with our strategy to expand our product portfolio and reach. Partnering with IUVP would help us in working towards our vision. With support from IUVP we will continue on our high growth trajectory by expanding our product line and tapping newer markets.”

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