Zomato raises fresh $37 million funding led by Sequoia along with Info Edge

Zomato raises fresh $37 million funding led by Sequoia along with Info Edge

By Prathamesh Patil

Deepinder Goyal founded restaurant discovery guide Zomato has raised $37 million in Series D funding from Sequoia Capital and existing investors Info Edge to launch its services in three new countries – Brazil (Sao Paulo), Turkey (Istanbul, Ankara), and Indonesia (Jakarta). In these three countries, Zomato will be available in local languages as well – Portuguese, Turkish, and Bahasa Indonesia respectively.

Available across web, mobile, and print, Zomato provides in-depth information such as menus, directions, contact details, pictures, and user reviews, for over 160,000 restaurants in 11 countries with its India and UAE operation having achieved break even already. More than half of Zomato’s traffic is seen on its mobile apps which is a testimony to the fact that local search is moving to mobile very fast. Over the next two years, Zomato plans to expand to 22 more countries across Europe, South-East Asia, Australia and the Americas.

“This is an exciting phase for us. We believe that we can disrupt restaurant search with our rich content-driven model. This financing will help us develop a product that will change the way people look for restaurant recommendations around them. We are excited to partner with Sequoia Capital as our venture partner to help us succeed internationally, and we can look forward to seeing Zomato in many more countries over the next couple of years.” Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato.

With an aggressive tactics it aims to take on the likes of San Francisco-based Yelp which happens to be one of the most valued companies in this sector with a market capitalisation of over $4.5 billion.

Started as Foodiebay in July 2008 with a list of 1,200 restaurants in the Delhi NCR region, it was able to break even in June 2010 and rebranded itself as Zomato in November 2010. It has previously raised close to $16.5 million from Info Edge, owner of naukri.com. The current round of funding values Zomato at $125 million which helped Info Edge dilute its stake from 57.9% to 50.1%.

Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder of Info Edge said, “Zomato is one of the finest consumer Internet businesses to come out of India. It has a great team, a great brand, a super user experience, a dominant market share, excellent revenue scale-up with a known path to profit, and a global opportunity. We are excited to partner with them to build a world-class restaurant search engine.”

It follows a rich-content approach to restaurant search and has a team that collects menu cards, clicks pictures and gets mapping information on its own which is updated every three months.

For the love of food and how true!

Cloudnine raises Rs 100-crore led by Sequoia along with an existing investor

Cloudnine raises Rs 100-crore led by Sequoia along with an existing investor  

By Prathamesh Patil

Bangalore based maternity and infant care Cloudnine has raised $16 million in Series B round of funding from Sequoia along with existing investor Matrix Partners India for an undisclosed stake.

The proceeds would be used to set up 10 new centres over the next two years. The first one in Chennai will deliver quality services in maternal, neonatal, gynecological and infertility care.

Cloudnine Hospitals was founded in January 2007 as a joint venture of Kids Clinic Pvt. Ltd, owned by Kishore Kumar and Scrips N Scrolls India, a property development and investments company.  The center was associated with Apollo initially and was known as Cradle. In 2011, it parted ways with Apollo which owned the brand ‘The Cradle’ to rechristen itself as Cloudnine.

It runs five facilities in Bangalore specializing in Maternity, Gynecology, Paediatrics, Intensive Care & Fertility.

Back in 2011, Martix Partners India Invested $ around $10 million in the first institutional round of funding by picking 25% stake in Clouldnine. As a part of the deal Avnish Bajaj, Managing Director, Matrix Partners joined Cloundnine’s board.
“Mother and childcare services is an area in which we have been spending lot of time in past 12 months,” said GV Ravishankar, managing director at Sequoia Capital India Advisors as told to ET.

“Cloudnine has achieved and sustained a zero percent maternal mortality rate and a 99.72% survival rate for babies across 16000 deliveries.  Our IVF success rates, too, are amongst the highest in the country at 42.31%. These rates compare favourably with those achieved in the most developed countries across the globe,” said Dr. Kishore Kumar, Chairman and Managing Director, Cloudnine.

The deal comes on the back of Cloudnine’s  expansion strategy to open facilities in major cities outside Karnataka. It plans to add 3 more facilities by next year.

Are you looking for customizable travel itineraries scattered across the globe?

Are you looking for customizable travel itineraries scattered across the globe? 

By Prathamesh Patil

Welcome to Mygola. The Bangalore & US based trip planning startup lets users discover, customize & instantly book itineraries all around the world. Mygola has a huge collection of handpicked trips sourced directly from real travelers.

A user can pick a default itinerary or choose to build his own.

Mygola wants users to do away with the tedious task of planning a trip a including destination sourcing, navigating through the maze of Google Maps, bookings and then trying to stay with the organized logistics. Instead it wanted to grant users to experience & transport them to desired destination even as they were planning their trip. That required ranking infrastructure, evocative images, relevant videos, stunning panoramic views and authentic tips left by travelers from all over the web.

The patented algorithms & big data analysis is empowering the platform to the next level. The business model has the potentially partner with all of the transaction-focused companies out there.

Mygola is founded by Ex-Google Executive & travel enthusiast Anshuman Bapna & fellow IITan Prateek Sharma in 2009 with an aim of building an usual company to simplify the usually complex problem of travel planning. Bapna sold his start-up RightHalf when he was studying at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay.

The startup has recently announced $1.5 million Series A funding led by Helion Venture Partners, with participation from existing investor Blumberg Capital. Helion’s Ashish Gupta will join the board of Mygola as a part of the deal. In December 2011, it secured $1 million in seed funding from Blumberg Capital & Dave McClure, founder of Silicon Valley-based accelerator 500 Start-ups.

Homeshop18 raises fresh $14 million funding from existing investors

Homeshop18 raises fresh $14 million funding from existing investors

By Prathamesh Patil

Network18 Group’s online retail marketing venture HomeShop18 has closed a $14 million follow-on funding from Korean Home Shopping Major GS, OCP Asia & Network18. GS will invest $11 Million; OCP Asia & Network18 will invest the remaining amount.

The transaction values HomeShop18 at $360 Million.

Network18 will remain the majority shareholder (51%) in HomeShop18. SAIF Partners, GS Home Shopping and OCP Asia are the other existing investors at HomeShop18. GS is the third largest Home Shopping company in the world and the market leader in Korea.

Huh Tae Soo, CEO and President, GS Home Shopping said, “We are delighted to invest further in HomeShop18, India’s leading virtual commerce company. We believe that HomeShop18 is well positioned to capitalize on the Indian consumer opportunity and we look forward to supporting the company with our global experience. ”

Funding Timeline:
– 2006 : $21million maiden funding from SAIF Partners for 25% stake in the retail venture-
– 2008 : $16million from SAIF Partners & $5 from Network18’s venture capital arm Capital18
– 2009 : GS Home Shopping invested $18.5 million for strategic stake & Network18 Holdings invested another $5 million.
– 2011 : SAIF Partners Fund & GS Home Shopping pumped in another $23million
– 2013 : $15million from OCP Asia & $15 from Networ18
– 2013 : $14million from GS Home Shopping, OCP Asia & Network18

It acquired startup Coinjoos.com in 2011 to supplement its product categories with books

HomeShop18 launched India’s first 24 hour Home Shopping TV channel in 2008. It provides an integrated virtual shopping experience on Internet, Television and Mobile through HomeShop18.com and the 24×7 TV channel. Since inception, HomeShop18 has acquired a customer base of 7.5 Million. It has built an impressive portfolio of over 12 million SKUs across multiple product categories and a logistical reach of over 3,000 locations across India. Homeshop18 is one of India’s fastest growing virtual commerce companies with revenues having more than doubled over the last year.

“This round marks an inflexion point for the business as the company rapidly moves towards profitability while continuing to scale up revenues. It is gratifying to see the vote of confidence in our business model from GS and the continued support of OCP and our Promoter, Network18.” Sundeep Malhotra, CEO, HomeShop18.

BMR Advisors acted as transaction advisors to TV18 Home Shopping Network Ltd.

Why Endpoint Data Protection and Backup Firm Druva is Attracting Investor Attention

Why Endpoint Data Protection and Backup Firm Druva is Attracting Investor Attention

By Prathamesh Patil

Druva recently closed $25 million in Series C funding in support of its inSync platform, an integrated suite of endpoint data protection and governance solutions that currently safeguards corporate information assets on desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones in 76 countries. The round adding to $17 million raised in Series A and B installments in 2010 and 2011 – includes follow-on investments from Sequoia Capital and Nexus Venture Partners as well as a substantial first-time investment from Tenaya Capital. Tom Banahan from Tenaya will be joining the board of Druva.

Druva’s inSync addresses shifting enterprise data protection requirements spurred by mobilization, free online file sharing services, changing work habits, and the consumerization of IT. The suite uniquely integrates automated endpoint backup, IT-managed file sharing, encryption and other data loss prevention capabilities, and a centralized audit trail of all data content and movement for governance, compliance, eDiscovery and forensics. It also creates a master record of all endpoint data that enables end users to access any file remotely, plus easy content recovery in the event of device loss or theft.

Driven by that broad range of features, Druva’s customer base has expanded from 1,500 to 2,100 in the last year with a corresponding jump from 1 million to 1.7 million in the number of endpoints under protection. The company has also expanded its workforce from 124 at the end of 2012 to an expected 200 by the end of 2013, and introduced a major inSync upgrade and two new private cloud deployment options since January.

The new funding will underwrite continued R&D, expanded global sales and marketing, and expansion of Druva’s cloud infrastructure to support new deployments by large enterprises that require the elasticity, multi-tenancy and flexibility of the cloud along with the security, compliance and cost advantages of hosting IT solutions behind the company firewall.

“With the proliferation of mobile devices and the loss of security and accountability in today’s ‘post-PC’ world, every organization today is facing the need to change the way they protect and govern data,” said Jaspreet Singh, Druva founder and CEO. “The size of this latest funding round is a direct result of our unified strategy for solving these problems, our success to date in attracting customers ranging from UC Berkeley to Sephora and NASA, and our roadmap for expanding the inSync platform to become an essential component of the IT infrastructure.”

“Risk management is one of the major responsibilities of IT departments, but most companies have lagged in modifying their policies to manage the risks of mobile computing,” said Shailendra Singh, Managing Director at Sequoia Capital. “Druva was one of the first companies to recognize and address that gap, continues to innovate, and is positioned to transform the way that organizations shield themselves from data and compliance breaches.”