Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Canaan Partners, the venture capital firm that focuses on the US, India and Israel, has closed its ninth fund at $600 million. The new fund has been backed by  both new and existing LPs and it takes the firm’s total assets under management to $3.5 billion.

About two-thirds of the fund corpus will be put toward digital media, consumer internet, mobile and communications companies, with the rest earmarked for biopharma, medical device and healthcare infrastructure investments.

“We’ve had the privilege of working with outstanding entrepreneurs – often over a long haul because it takes time to build a valuable company, and it’s rarely a straight line to get there,” John Balen, general partner at Canaan Partners.

Canaan’s current Indian portfolio companies include BharatMatrimony, which claims to be the world’s largest consumer internet site for matrimonial services, business support services provider iYogi, shopping portal Naaptol and legal process outsourcing firm UnitedLex. Recently Canaan Partners has led $45M investment along with Intel Capital at Happiest Minds, an IT services firm founded by former Mindtree Chairman Ashok Soota. Canaan funded web company – Chakpak was acquired by Flipkart.

-Hitesh, vcBytes

iYogi, a remote technical support company raises $30M in series D round and it was led by Industry major Sequoia Capital with participation from existing investors Canaan Partners , SVB Capital Partners , SAP Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Since its inception in 2006, the Gurgaon-based company has raised $27 million in three earlier rounds and is targeting an eventual public listing of shares in the coming year as its need for expansion capital rises.

“We are seeing a four-fold increase in revenues and are raising growth equity to expand across Middle East and Europe as well as launch our services in India by the second quarter of 2011,” said Udai Challu, co-founder and chief executive officer, iYogi, which offers online technical support to over 2.5 lakh retail customers across the UK, the US, Australia and Canada.

iYogi provides technical support through its various products. Its products include iYogi Smart PC Scan, iYogi Support Dock, iYogi Green PC and iYogi PC Optimization.

This year in January, iYogi raised $15 Mn form DFJ, in its series-C round of funding.  It had raised $12.6 Mn VC funding from  Canaan Partners, SAP Ventures and SVB India Capital Partners in its earlier round of funding.

iYogi is currently present in the US, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. It now plans to launch its services in Europe and emerging markets such as the Middle-East and India next year.

iYogi delivers most of the services from India, and has plans to set up a facility in the Philippines by March 2011. iYogi which currently services PC users running Windows and related consumer devices, is also planning to offer support around other devices, including desktop and mobile products from Apple, mobile phones running the Symbian operating system, and BlackBerry devices.

The company currently has 350,000 subscribers, in addition to some customers who approach iYogi for incident-based support. Earlier in May’09, iYogi acquired Utah based Clean Machine Inc, a personal computer security and performance management service provider, for an undisclosed amount.

Surely raining $ for iYogi.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

iYogi raises $15M in series C round funding led by DFJ, existing investors SAP Ventures, Canaan Partners and SVB India Capital Partners also participated in this funding process.iYogi provides online technical support for personal computers to small business and individuals across the world. iYogi headquartered in Gurgaon is founded by serial entrepreneurs Challu and Vishal Dhar.

iYogi’s Award winning Global Delivery Platform, iMantra,  documents every problem, solution and relevant hardware and software specs, while capturing each customer’s demographic information and creates a behavioral profile. All of this information is at the fingertips of iYogi’s Global Tech Experts, combining a powerful knowledge base with a comprehensive set of tools, and technology expertise, that can be accessed on demand to deliver great tech support.

iYogi’s prominent clients include Amazon.com and Walmart.

-Hitesh, vcbytes.com