Eight Companies Raise $52 Million-plus

TutorVista has raised $30.75 million over three rounds of funding

Four corporate venture capital deals and two education-related investments marked the early stage/venture deal space in July. My pick for the ‘Deal of the Month‘ is serial entrepreneur K Ganesh’s TutorVista which has combined speed with consistency in its growth and therefore held the ability to raise funds thrice in less than three years from big-ticket investors. There is something to be said for experience. Collectively, venture capitalists invested $52 million-plus in eight companies. Tell me which deal you thought was most interesting and why. Here’s the lowdown on the July tally:

iYogi raised $9.5 million in Series B funding from SAP Ventures and existing investors Canaan Partners and SVB India Capital Partners. The company provides remote technical support services out of Gurgaon, Haryana, to homes and small offices — they troubleshoot your computer-related problems for an annual fee. In its earlier round of funding, just last April, the company raised $3.1 million from Canaan and SVB, a little over a years after its launch in November 2005. The company’s principal focus markets are the US and UK but they also offer the service in India. It claims 50,000 customers — see the IYogi release — though at $119.99 per annual service subscription for unlimited services, it is a bit steep for the Indian market. iYogi calls itself a personal offshoring company, a genre that has become popular in the Indian remote services landscape over the last couple of years in areas such as online tutoring, taxation-related services and research.

Intel Capital closed three quick deals in July — it invested an aggregate of $17 million in Yatra (online travel), Buzzintown (social networking) and Emnet Samsara (out-of-home advertising). The break-up of investment per company is not available — see the Intel Capital release. The firm invests here from a $250 million dedicated India fund and has backed 50-odd companies here so far. It is arguably among the most successful — a quarter of its 27 exits in 2007 came from India — and active corporate venture capital investors in this market. Other foreign also active here include Cisco Systems, Siemens Venture Capital and Google most recently.

This one would also qualify as a corporate venture capital deal. Comparison shopping portal Naaptol received undisclosed funding from Bennet, Coleman & Co. The company is actually quite interesting. Small retail stores can register on the portal and make their products available online. It claims a database of over 10,000 products. Others in the category include Compare India and Pricesbolo.

K Ganesh’s TutorVista, which has to be one the fastest growing Indian startups in recent times — 100,000 users in just over two years — raised $18 million from Sequoia Capital and LightSpeed Venture Partners. This is the third round (Series C) of funding for the online tutoring company — Sequoia invested $2 million June 2006 and in December the same year it raised $10.75 million from Lightspeed ($7 million), Sequoia and Silicon Valley Bank. TutorVista acquired Bangalore-based Edurite Technologies in November last year to add an offline component to its business model and the fresh funds infusion will be used to expand the offline presence.

Education technology solutions company Idenizen Smartware — SmartCampus — has picked up $2.5 million from NEA-IndoUS Ventures. The four year old Bangalore-based company will use the money to expand across the country — see press release — and is NEA-IndoUS’ tenth deal in India so far.

Mumbai’s web-based advertising platform Ideacts Innovations raised $5 million from Sequoia Capital India. The company started operations in March last year and has Contests2Win founder on board as an advisor (perhaps also as an angel investor?) — read Medianama’s take on the business model.

Venture capitalists invested $92.02 million-plus across 13 companies in the first six months of 2008. See the deal tally here.

Data Source: Grant Thornton India. TutorVista Logo: Company website