Ahmedabad-based GVFL to Invest $14 Mn in Startups Across India

Ahmedabad-based venture finance company, GVFL Limited (formerly Gujarat Venture Finance Limited), announced that it plans to invest ₹ 100 crore ( ~ US$14.46 million ) to fund startups across the country.

The investment will be made by December 2020, confirmed CEO of GVFL, Mihir Joshi, while speaking in a event held in Ahmedabad on Wednesday.

Founded in 1990, GVFL has so far raised eight venture capital funds which have supported over 80 companies and have divested from over 75% of portfolio companies. It provides seed financing and early-stage and growth capital to small- and medium-sized companies based in India.

GVFL CEO further said, "The company has already invested in some eight startups. We have already made an investment worth ₹ 50 crore over the past year and a half to fund some eight startups based in India. Of these, five startups were based out of Gujarat. The average ticket size of investments made so far ranges from ₹ 5-10 crore depending on the fund requirement by these startups,” he added.

GVFL has already made an investment worth ₹ 50 crore over the past year and a half to fund some 8 startups in the country and out of this 5 startups were based out of Gujarat. The average ticket size of investments made so far ranges from ₹ 5-10 crore depending on the fund requirement by these startups,” 

GVFL has recently invested in Optimized Electrotech Private Limited (OEPL), an electro-optics startup working on indigenously designed, developed and manufactured (IDDM) Surveillance systems. Prior to this,
GVFL contributed in $3.7 million funding round of Sequretek, a Mumbai-based cyber security startup.

Source - Times of India

Unified Data Analysis Platform FORMCEPT Secures Series A Funding From GVFL

An incubatee of the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship CIIE-IIM Ahmadabad, FORMCEPT Technologies and Solutions has secured an undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by a pioneer venture capital fund in India, GVFL Ltd.

GVFL has invested in FORMCEPT through its recent technology and innovation fund, GVFL Startup Fund. With this round, Sankalp Bajpai, Vice President, Investments, GVFL will be joining the board of FORMCEPT.

Founded in 1990 at the initiative of World Bank, GVFL Ltd has supported ventures working on cutting-edge technology as well as encouraged entrepreneurs with innovative ideas. Over the past two decades, GVFL has raised eight venture capital funds which have supported over 80 companies.

With the freshly infused fund, startup plans to accelerate its growth by going global. Commenting on the development, Suresh Srinivasan, Co-founder, FORMCEPT said “Our product is already proven with a handful of Fortune 1000 clients. We would now expand our technology team in India and cater to international markets where our solutions have immense potential.”

Co-founded by Suresh Srinivasan and Anuj Kumar in 2011, FORMCEPT is a unified data analysis platform that helps enterprises get actionable insights from their data faster.
It not only provides a unified interface for storing and querying datasets but also provides batch processing, stream processing and interactive analysis out of the box. It is built on top of NoSQL technologies, like- HDFS, HBase for storage, systems like Map-Reduce, Spark, Shark and Storm for data processing and utilizes the power of graph database, key-value store and index store to provide a seamless experience for the end users.

Known for nurturing its investee startups with mentoring and support, the portfolio team of CIIE played an active role in mobilising this round for Bengaluru-based FORMCEPT. CIIE had a major head-start in cognitive data analytics when it incubated FORMCEPT.

CIIE is the technology business incubator based at the IIMA, aiming to help India’s budding entrepreneurs set up innovative, disruptive and scalable ventures through mentoring, incubation, advising and funding initiatives.

Cyber Security Startup Sequretek Raises Series A from GVFL and Unicorn India Ventures

Sequretek, a Mumbai-based cyber security start-up, has raised Series A from GVFL (formerly Gujarat Venture Finance Limited) and Unicorn India Ventures. Sequretek was launched in 2013 by Anand Naik, a well-known information security industry veteran with leadership roles at Symantec, IBM and Sun Microsystems and IT Industry veteran Pankit Desai, who has worked in top management roles across Rolta, NTT Data, IBM India.

Sequretek offers a comprehensive suite of products and services for securing information for their enterprise customers. The Company has three offerings for its customers – Avatar, Kawach and Integrated Managed Cyber Security. These offerings provide 360-degree protection, ranging from insider threats to external advanced persistent threats to enterprise customers and also has the capability to monitor customer’s environment on a 24x7 basis for deriving actionable intelligence to assess vulnerabilities, if any. Currently, enterprises have to manage multiple security tools, which operate in silos, from several vendors thus adding to the complexity of handling targeted cyber threats. To combat this issue, Sequretek is building an integrated technology platform capable of providing complete protection to enterprises’ security needs.

Sequretek clientele includes some of the most prominent names like HDFC Bank, IDBI Federal, HDFC Limited and NCDEX along with several others from financial, retail, pharma and IT/ITES sectors.

Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures says. “Data has become an important currency for companies and even malicious elements, especially when the data is consumed on multiple devices. Thus, companies want to protect it even more fiercely now knowing how important it is to protect data from any vulnerability especially when the Government is focusing on digitization. Sequretek’s founding team and their ability to generate initial traction among top clients in industry within a short span of launching their business has given us the confidence to back this team."

Sanjay Ranadhar, MD, GVFL says, "Given the ever increasing complexity in cyber security industry, we believe that enterprises are looking for an effective and comprehensive solution that helps them to detect, monitor and respond to advanced cyber threats on a daily basis. Sequretek's 'unified threat platform', which eliminates the need for multiple security tools within enterprise IT security systems was one of the significant aspects that got us excited about the company."

Pankit Desai, Co-Founder and CEO, Sequretek says. “Information Security is of paramount concern to enterprises across the world. Unfortunately, the way security has evolved has resulted in silos each addressing a niche problem. At Sequretek, we believe in trying to simplify security and drive down the overall cost of ownership. Unicorn India Ventures and GVFL’s vision of supporting enterprise focused and massively scalable tech companies fits very well with our vision of partnering with investors who can be accretive to the company’s growth.”

Sanjay Randhar, MD, GVFL and Manoj Laddha, Partner, Unicorn India Ventures will be joining the board of Sequretek.

Sequretek plans to use the funds for further building on intelligence within their current product offerings and foray into new markets within India and out side.

Online Ticket Booking Platform Travelyaari Gets $3M Led By Existing Investor GVFL Ltd

Bangalore-headquartered online ticket booking platform Travelyaari which is owned and operated by Mantis Technologies Pvt Ltd, has raised $3 million in a bridge round of funding led by existing investor GVFL Ltd with participation from some other undisclosed investors. The deal got closed in March, as per DealStreetAsia report.

The company will use the money for its expansion and marketing plans. Around five years ago, GVFL had invested in Travelyaari through its SME Technology Venture Fund.

Travelyaari’s backend system, which is used by more than 1,600 operators for their day-to-day operations, supports annual transaction volume of more than Rs 3,000 crore. Apart from providing online ticketing facility, Mantis Technologies, founded by IIM-Ahmedabad graduates Aurvind Lama and Partha Sinha, also provides technology platforms for bus operators for ticket bookings.

Till date, Travelyaari has raised around Rs 20 crore from Bennett & Coleman and Company Ltd, GVFL and IIM Ahmedabad’s incubator, Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE). Founded in 2007, Travelyaari started commercial operations in 2008, provides services through its online products like BusCRS, IamGDS, BusTicketBooking API besides Travelyaari. The firm, which has 200 employees, is looking to triple its headcount. As of December 2015, it had a network of more than 2,100 bus service providers with over 1,43,000 bus options per day on 45,000 routes. Travelyaari is also planning to launch cabs and automobile bookings service.

The company competes with the likes of redBus.in, Paytm and Abhibus.com.

GVFL Ltd, earlier Gujarat Venture Finance Ltd, is also plans to raise its eighth fund of Rs 250 crore. It had received market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India‘s (SEBI) approval for the new fund in December last tear. GVFL has managed seven venture capital funds since its inception in 1990. It has backed 83 technology and growth stage companies, according to its website. Till date, the VC firm had made around 60 exits.

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