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MUMBAI:
Sulekha.com, the online social media and local commerce destination
for Indians,has announced Promod Haque's global technology venture
capital firm, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP)'s series A, investment
of $10 million in the company.
Sulekha.com
plans to use the new capital to extend business development and
marketing, primarily through alliances, and expand its service offerings
into new vertical markets. NVP managing partner Promod Haque, has
joined the Sulekha board of directors. Sulekha, founded and run
by Satya Prabhakar, received prior funding from the Indigo Monsoon
Group (IMG), led by Param Parameswaran and Harish Raghavan. IMG
invests in early stage companies in the Indian Internet and Mobile
domains.
"Sulekha
has been a Web 2.0 company even during the Web 1.0 days. It has
positioned itself at the vortex of three of the largest Internet
mega-trends: India, Social Media and Local Commerce through industry-leading
services including Blogs, Social Networks, Classifieds and Yellow
Pages. While the management of Sulekha has done a great job of developing
reach and revenue, the real explosive potential, both in online
and mobile platforms, is still in front of us," said Haque.
"NVP
is one of the most reputed venture capital firms in the world with
more than 45 years of experience in building successful companies.
This, coupled with NVP's strong interest, many investments and relationships
across various industries in India, made NVP a great choice for
Sulekha as we pursue aggressive growth plans in the coming year,"
said, Sulekha.com founder and CEO Satya Prabhakar. "In particular,
we look forward to working with Promod Haque who, with his valuable
experience and vast global network, has helped numerous companies,
both in U.S. and India, soar and succeed," he added.
"The
marriage of trusted member to member interactions and its application
to classifieds and business search/ratings holds incredible promise
in spurring local commerce in India. Sulekha's successful track
record of aggregating member content and interactions by city and
by vertical areas of interest will allow us to deploy the new capital
to dominate this market niche," said IMG and Sulekha.com Chairman
Param Parameswaran.
Sulekha's
Portfolio of Services - Interact and Transact
By offering a user-generated platform and a trusted community network,
Sulekha enables Indians to interact and transact with their peers
and businesses through three popular services:
Blogs
and Social Networking - Sulekha provides the largest and most popular
platform for Indians to voice their ideas, opinions and reviews
in blogs. Users can also connect with other Indians creating online
social networks. Just as social networking driven by expression
has become a destination for US consumers, Sulekha brings the same
experience to India and beyond.
Sulekha
has crafted successful offline partnerships with such companies
as Penguin, DNA and Indian Express to create important additional
distribution avenues for its tens of thousands of bloggers.
Classifieds
- Sulekha has the largest and most popular Indian classifieds marketplace
for goods and services that fosters transactive relationships among
its members in over 25 cities worldwide daily. With more than 250,000
ads and addressing 80% of online Indians worldwide, Sulekha provides
unparalleled opportunities to connect members when they need to
interact and transact.
Yellow
Pages - Sulekha.com is the provider of online yellow pages in India
supporting millions of business searches every month. Sulekha leverages
its vast audience to help local businesses reach customers on a
daily basis, and includes user-contributed reviews, ratings and
recommendations to enable consumers to make the most informed purchasing
decisions. Sulekha's yellow pages currently offer business listings
in eight cities throughout India and US. Sulekha Yellow Pages is
also integrated with WAP-enabled mobile phones for mobile downloads
of listings.
"While
we are only recently witnessing tremendous interest in Web 2.0 startups
worldwide, Sulekha has been a thought leader in this space for some
time, and continues to make rapid strides. Sulekha's strong and
experienced management team is well-positioned to capitalize on
the unprecedented Internet growth in India over the last year, and
we believe the company has a first mover advantage in pursuing significant
revenue-generating opportunities in the coming years," added
Haque.
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