Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

HealthKart, gurgaon based online retailer has raised $5M from Sequoia Capital and Omidyar Network as part of series B round.  In April 2011 HealthKart had raised $1M from Kae Capital and Sequoia Capital.

Primarily the investments will be utilized in strengthening the product portfolio, supply chain system and good chunk of investments will be deployed in marketing.

Healthkart, is founded by two IIT-D graduates – Prashant Tandon and Sameer Maheshwari. They have able to bring in some talented entrepreneurs in their core team, for instance Animesh Jain is head of Online Marketing & Product, Animesh was CEO and Cofounder of iTasveer.

Healthkart which began as online health store has expanded its product portfolio, now it sells baby care, cosmetic products as well.

Lets have a look at their monthly traction:

Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	–	150K
Unique visitors (users)	–	69K
Page views	–	1M
Total visits	–	150K
Avg time on site	–	8:00

-Hitesh, vcBytes

TutorVista, yesterday announced that Pearson, the world’s leading education company, is acquiring a majority stake in the company at an equity valuation of $213 MM (about Rs.960 crores). TutorVista is a global education services company that is the largest online tutoring company in the world and through Edurite, its Indian subsidiary, a leader in ICT, tutorials and schools business in India.

Started five years ago to create a global education company that makes education accessible and affordable,  TutorVista and Edurite are recognized as leading education companies in US and India. TutorVista.com has grown at a rapid pace with six million visitors per month visiting its site. TutorVista has served over five million tutoring sessions till date to students worldwide. The company has two thousand teachers and has helped more than 100,000 students achieve their education goals. Pearson will gain a strong foothold in the online education space and in the large Indian education market with this acquisition.  Pearson is already an investor in TutorVista for the last two years and was very impressed with the management team, its vision and passion and the rapid growth of both TutorVista and Edurite.

Jointly, Pearson and TutorVista, plan to grow the online education business rapidly by integrating online tutoring into all of Pearson’s digital products, selling it to schools and higher education institutions and by offering further educational services globally.  With Pearson’s global reach in more than 60 countries. TutorVista will launch online tutoring and language coaching services across the globe. Both companies will work on providing world-class educational content to students, open more schools and grow the tutorial business significantly.

Pearson has experience of education and publishing for over two centuries with world famous brands like Longman, Penguin and Prentice Hall.  More than half the schools in US use Pearson products.

TutorVista has raised over $33 MM in funding from leading venture capital firms – Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Ventures and from strategic investors- Manipal Education, Medical Group and Pearson.
With this acquisition.

Great time for investors like Sequoia Capital which first invested $2M in Tutorvista.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

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

Some sort of consolidation happening in the photo printing space, Bangalore based Lifeblob( funded by angel VC firm Seedfund) has been acquired by Printo, a sequoia capital funded company.

Lifeblob was founded by Pranav bhasin and Rakesh Rajan in 2007 as a photo sharing service that allows users to explore photos through relations around it in a visually engaging format. In 2008, Lifeblob launched nnovative social timeline interface that was used by companies like Sony Music to promote their artists. In 2009 Lifeblob had around 4 Million photos in their system and in 2010, they shifted focus to merchandising of personalized photo gifts to start building a steady revenue stream.

Printo was founded in 2005 and is India’s fastest growing network of print and document shops. Printo has a simple mission: put a smile on the customer’s face by making his/her printing experience extremely easy. With an experienced team of professionals across industry segments, from retail, software, printing and manufacturing, Printo is all set to have retail outlets across India, making it possible for you to avail of our fast and predictable services at multiple and convenient locations across major cities.

Founders of LifeBlob  are extremely excited about this new partnership and the value it creates for users in providing a comprehensive online/offline solution for all printing needs. LifeBlob has been working with Printo as its fulfillment partner, This acquisition is a step forward to bring together one of the finest online photo merchandising platforms, together with the largest retail printing network in India.

LifeBlob montly traction –

Dropbox is a Web-based file hosting service which uses cloud computing to enable users to store and share files and folders with others across the Internet using file synchronization.
Dropbox received seed funding from Y Combinator and then raised Venture capital from two reputed VC firms – Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, Dropbox was launched in September of 2008 and it has attracted millions of users and is growing rapidly.

vcBytes readers may like this presentation where founders of Dropbox discuss the lessons learned while creating and promoting it.

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

JustDial, India’s no.1 local search engine is becoming truly global. In June 2010 JustDial  launched  its  US  operations.  Americans  can  call  1-800- JUSTDIAL  speak  to  a  live  operator  who  can  assist  them instant  information on any service in their neighborhood or city. Just Dial is the first local search engine to test the foreign shores.

JustDial will be soon launching its services in countries depicted in this image below -

JustDial has clear leadership in local search space in India with almost a 90% market share. JustDial Access points are - Phone (69999999/23333333), Web (justdial.com), WAP (wap.justdial.com) and SMS (53999).

Just Dial launched specialized services like JustDial Genie, a personal assistant that will give consumers 24 hour service  and JustDial Trends, a truly democratic  popularity ranking dashboard based on the queries Just Dial receives.

In July 2009, JustDial raised over $8M from Sequoia Capital.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

US-based PE firms Sandstone Capital and Sequoia Capital have acquired a minority stake in Micromax Informatics Limited, an India-based provider of mobile phone solutions and wireless technologies for mobile users, for about INR2,000 million ($43.52 million), in a pre-IPO placement.

Sandstone and Sequoia have acquired less than 10% stake in Micromax. This is the second PE placement in Micromax after TA Associates acquired a minority stake of less than 20% in the company for Rs.225 crore in January this year.
For 2009-10, it posted revenues of Rs.1,600 Cr with a net profit of Rs.150 Cr.

Micromax leads a pack of domestic companies, which includes Karbonn Mobiles, Spice Mobiles, Videocon Industries and Lava International, that have made inroads into the Rs.30,000-crore mobile phone market traditionally dominated by multinationals such as Nokia, Samsung, LG and Motorola. The company is the largest domestic mobile handset company. It has expanded sales network in countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Sequoia Capital India along with Song Investment Advisors have invested $15 million  into K-12 Techno Services Pvt Ltd, a firm that manages a network of over 50 schools owned by Hyderabad-headquartered Gowtham Educational Institutions.

Sequoia led the investments in K-12 Techno, an infrastructure and technology firm that manages schools, as the domestic regulatory environment prohibits investor ownership of not-for-profit educational assets. Gowtham is among the top three private educational groups in Andhra Pradesh.

The investment will be deployed for expanding Gowtham’s network of model schools across India, sources directly familiar with the development said. Gowtham owns schools, junior colleges and an international school with over 50,000 students on its rolls.

With the investment, KP Balaraj, managing director and Ravishankar G V, principal of Sequoia Capital and Vishal Vasishth of SONG have joined the board of K12.

This marks Sequoia’s second investment in India’s education sector. It is already an investor in TutorVista that is rolling out K-12 schools in a joint initiative with Manipal Education.  ISB based Song Investment Advisors is backed by Soros Economic Development Fund, Omidiyar Network and Google.

Sequoia Capital India today announced that it has invested INR 60 crore in Quick Heal Technologies, India’s leading provider of computer security software products. This investment will help Quick Heal Technologies in growing its product portfolio, expanding its global distribution footprint and funding future acquisitions.

Quick Heal Technologies has been growing at a CAGR of almost 100% for the last three years, making it the fastest growing software product company in the computer security space in India. The Company registered revenues of more than INR 100 crore in FY 09-10, all from its indigenously developed product portfolio. With this investment Sumir Chadha, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India will join the board of the company.

Sumir Chadha, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India said, “Quick Heal is today the first choice computer security product for consumers and business owners. We are confident that the company will continue to strengthen its dominant position in India and replicate this success in overseas markets.”

Quick Heal has a suite of award-winning computer security products that are installed in corporate, small businesses and consumer’s homes protecting their computers from viruses and other security threats. The Quick Heal Total Security product, addresses a wide range of distinct security needs that protect the PC from online and offline threats, in addition to providing privacy protection and PC optimization. The company also added a unique feature to Quick Heal Total Security called the PC2Mobile Scan, which enables users to scan, detect and delete malware, spyware and viruses from mobile phones.

Kailash Katkar, Managing Director and CEO, Quick Heal Technologies said, “We are proud to have Sequoia Capital partner us in our quest to be a global market leader in computer security. While we continue to build on the strong platform in the domestic market, we will also look to expand our global network through organic and inorganic growth.”

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com