Press Release Summary: Suvidhaa Infoserve Pvt Ltd (SIPL), the pioneer of the Services Commerce (“S-Commerce”) revolution in India, today announced that it has received funding from two leading global venture capital firms, Reliance Technology Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners India (NVP India). Reliance Technology Ventures directed the investment from one of its Group entities.
Press Release Body: Reliance Technology Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners Invests in ‘S-commerce’ Pioneer, ‘Suvidhaa’
Suvidhaa Infoserve to expand its presence in 100 cities and launch 20,000 franchisee outlets by March 2009
Mumbai, September 25, 2008: Suvidhaa Infoserve Pvt Ltd (SIPL), the pioneer of the Services Commerce (“S-Commerce”) revolution in India, today announced that it has received funding from two leading global venture capital firms, Reliance Technology Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners India (NVP India). Reliance Technology Ventures directed the investment from one of its Group entities.
Suvidhaa, promoted by Paresh Rajde and initially funded by Mr. Shapoor Pallonji Mistry, will use the new capital to aggressively expand its portfolio of service offerings into vertical markets throughout India and enhance business development and marketing efforts.
Suvidhaa brings “Services” to the doorstep of the Indian consumer. Consumers can now walk into their neighbourhood convenience / kirana stores and purchase all kinds of every day “Services” such as railway ticketing, mobile recharge, air ticketing, insurance payment, bill payment, bus ticketing, loan origination, movie ticketing and hundreds of other services which are in the pipeline. Suvidhaa makes this “S-Commerce” possible through its proprietary technology platform which seamlessly integrates these kirana stores to the various Services Provider’s systems.
Suvidhaa currently powers more than 4,000 local kirana stores across 15 states in over 100 cities with its S-commerce technology and plans to further expand to 20,000 franchisee outlets across the country by 2009. With minimal computer knowledge required, kirana store owners have found it very easy to sign up for and use the Suvidhaa platform. Further, kirana store owners are benefiting from increasing consumer footfalls and a steady source of additional income.
Suvidhaa has developed strong relationships with various top Indian corporates to deliver these services to consumers across India. Consumers can obtain services provided by leading companies including IRCTC for railway ticketing, all major airline companies such as Jet Airways, Kingfisher, Air India, SpiceJet, GoAir and IndiGo, telecom services such as Vodafone, Airtel, BSNL, Reliance, Idea, Tata and MTNL, more than 350 bus operators covering 5000+ routes, multiplexes such as AdLabs and Fun Cinema, leading financial services and insurance players such as LIC, ICICI Prudential, Reliance MF, UTI MF, Reliance Money, Kotak MF, LIC MF, SBI MF. Suvidhaa also supports bill payment for utility companies in areas such as Electricity, Gas, Telephones, Mobile, etc. Other services include education, filing of tax returns, e-Pooja services, credit card services etc. Suvidhaa will continue to launch number of innovative services on a monthly basis.
Explaining Reliance Technology Ventures’ investment, “Reliance has always been in the forefront of delivering the best value to the consumer. We believe Suvidhaa, through its electronic distribution platform, provides a one-stop convenience of services to the end consumer. It has an outstanding vision to empower traditional outlets with technology, and complements their existing businesses by driving in more footfalls. We will continue to invest in such technology-driven and differentiated business models that strive to deliver maximum benefit to end consumers.” notes Harshal Shah, CEO, Reliance Technology Ventures Limited.
“We believe that the S-commerce space represents a significant opportunity and are impressed with Suvidhaa’s vision to address this space. Suvidhaa’s business model targets the Services sector and addresses the consumer’s needs related to accessibility, convenience and value in the consumption of every day Services. Additionally, Suvidhaa’s robust services platform delivers high performance, saves time and money and results in higher overall customer satisfaction. We believe Suvidhaa is poised for tremendous growth and success in the years to come,” notes Niren Shah, Managing Director, NVP India.
Mr. Paresh Rajde, Founder MD & CEO, Suvidhaa Infoserve notes, “We look forward to working with Reliance Technology Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners to aggressively expand our pan-India footprint and empower more retailers and service providers with our scalable services platform. As of date, we have signed up over 4,000 outlets across 15 states in 100 cities, and that is only the beginning.”
Suvidhaa’s ‘S-Commerce’ platform enables real-time transactions across multiple service providers. The platform has been tested for up to 1 million transactions per day.
About Suvidhaa Infoserve Pvt. Ltd (SIPL)
Suvidhaa provides multiple services under one roof in most convenient form to the consumers. The motto of the company is to give convenience and value to all its customers who are looking for travel service like railway ticket, air, bus, hotel, utility bill payments, telecom products, entertainment, financial services like insurance, loans, investments, e-Governance and lifestyle related services. Our business expertise aims to address the prevailing gaps in various service sectors. Suvidhaa uses the technology platform to deliver the services giving an advantage to common man by way of high performance, saving of time & money and higher customer satisfaction. Suvidhaa is headquartered in Mumbai, with branch offices in Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Lucknow. For more information please visit: http://www.mysuvidhaa.com
About Reliance Technology Ventures Limited (RTVL)
Reliance Technology Ventures Ltd, is the corporate venture capital arm of the Reliance ADA Group and has advised and / or invested in deals to the tune of over $4 billion. Yatra.com, India’s largest on-line travel portal, Pelago Inc, Sequans Communications, Stoke Inc, E-Band Communications Corporation, Seedfund are some of its portfolio investments. RTVL had also advised Reliance Globalcom in the acquisition of U.K. based eWave World and in the $300 million acquisition of US based Yipes Holding, Inc, a leading provider of managed Ethernet Services. eWaveWorld is now Reliance WiMAX World and represents the Group’s $500 million initiative to bring WiMAX to 50 countries by 2012. RTVL has also led the investment into an undisclosed technology company which formed the basis of the largest venture capital transaction in India. RTVL invests
in leading edge technologies, disruptive business models and technology enabled companies around the world. For further information please visit: www.rtvl.co.in
About Norwest Venture Partners (NVP)
Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) is a global venture capital firm that has actively partnered with entrepreneurs to build great businesses for more than 45 years. NVP focuses on investments in information technology including: software, services, enterprise and communications systems, semiconductor/components and Internet, media and consumer. The firm currently manages more than $2.5 billion in venture capital out of its office in Palo Alto, California. Managing Partner Promod Haque has been ranked as a top dealmaker on the annual Forbes Midas List for the past three years. In 2004, Forbes named him as the #1 venture capitalist worldwide based on performance over the last decade.
NVP has funded over 450 companies in the U.S. since inception, as well as several direct investments in India and more than 20 cross border companies. Some of the firm’s recent investments and transactions include Adventity, Airespace (acquired by Cisco Systems), deCarta, KACE, mBlox, Omneon, Open-Silicon (acquired by Unicorn Investment Bank), Persistent Systems, Rackspace (NYSE: RAX), Resonext Communications (acquired by RF Micro Devices), SideStep (acquired by Kayak), Spinnaker Networks (acquired by Network Appliance), Sulekha, Winphoria Networks (acquired by Motorola), Yatra, and Yipes (acquired by Reliance/Flag Telecom). NVP has also funded such market leaders as Actel Corporation, Cerent (acquired by Cisco Systems), Documentum, Extreme Networks, Forte Software (acquired by Sun Microsystems), PeopleSoft and Tivoli Systems (acquired by IBM). For more information, please visit www.nvp.com
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