StartupCentral

Waterlife India, a startup that provides affordable potable water to underserved regions, has raised Rs 22 crore (approximately $4 million at current foreign exchange rates) from Matrix Partners India. This is the company’s second round of venture capital funding after it raised an undisclosed amount from Aavishkaar Venture Management Services in 2009. The stake acquired by Matrix was not disclosed.

Secunderabad-headquartered Waterlife was founded in 2009 by Sudesh Menon, former CEO WaterHealth India, and Mohan Ranbaore, former national director at Xerox India. The company has installed safe water systems in more than 1,500 villages and urban areas that cover more than one million people, said a press release issued by Matrix.

Singapore-based U2opia Mobile, fresh from a Series A round of funding (amount undisclosed) from Matrix Partners India, is looking to scale up India as its single largest market, even as it explores South East Asia and Africa. The company, founded last year by former Bubble Motion executives Sumesh Menon and Ankit Nautiyal, has a large portion of its development team working out of Gurgaon, Haryana, and expects to scale up this presence significantly in the next two quarters. Singapore functions as the company’s business development headquarters.

U2opia builds social applications to enable the growth, engagement and monetization of social networks on mobile. It currently has three products — Fonedoo, Fonetwish and Fonebuy.  Fonedoo helps users discover content for their mobile on the web through their social network. Fonetwish helps users access any favourite social network on any phone without requiring an active GPRS or 3G connection of their phone. Fonebuy looks at opportunities in micro-transactions for virtual goods. “It is clear that the world of the Internet and mobile are on a collision course to merge. However the way these industries approach business are very different. U2opia was formed as an attempt to help bridge these two worlds,” says co-founder and CEO Menon.

The company is also collaborating with social networking giant Facebook, which was looking at new ways to reach its audience and liked the Fonetwish product. “We met with Facebook at their Palo Alto headquarters in January this year and shared the first sketches of how Fonetwish would work,” says Menon. The U2opia team ended up with Facebook and other partners, including Airtel (the first telecom operator to launch Fonetwish) to bring the product to market.

The funding raised from Matrix is the company’s first institutional round of capital. It was angel funded by a group of technopreneurs. The fresh funds will be used to hire senior talent, build the engineering team for product development and expand its team to address global demand. The company currently employs 20 people and its target markets include India, Indonesia, Philippines and Africa. Menon claims that the company is currently generating cash from its operations. Its main revenue source is telecom operators.

Connect with U2opia at Facebook and Linkedin.

Yesterday, Mumbai-based online classifieds startup Quikr announced a Rs 20 crore Series B round of funding from Omidyar Network and existing investor Matrix Partners — see the press release here. The company had raised an undisclosed sum from Matrix in February last year. Online auction major eBay is also an investor in the firm. Incidentally, Quikr was earlier known as Kijiji and was a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay. The company, which started life as Kijiji in 2005, claims 1.5 million users per month and derives its revenues primarily through advertising. New media entrepreneur Pranay Chulet recently signed up as the company’s new CEO.

Omidyar Network is an interesting investor to bring on board. Quikr is the firm’s first consumer Internet investment in India. Started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar (in photo) and his wife Pam in 2004, the firm is into philanthropic investments and has committed $293 million in various such businesses till date. This includes $136 million invested in for-profit ventures and $157 million as grants in not-for-profit ventures. It has been a fairly active investor in India over the past few years. Here’s a list of its other India and India-related investments: Read the full story

Lightspeed Venture Partners has led a Rs 50 crore investment round in Essel Group-promoted Itz Cash Card, picking up an undisclosed stake in the Mumbai-based multi-purpose pre-paid card company. Existing investors Matrix Partners India and Intel Capital, who invested $10 million in the company in 2007, have also participated in this round. The company will use the money to venture into the retail payments space, apart from expanding its product portfolio.

Bejul Somaia (in photo), managing director of Lightspeed India, will join the Itz Cash Card board. The Menlo Park, California-headquartered venture and growth capital investor, which invests out of New Delhi and Bangalore here, sees “significant growth potential for this product given that cash accounts for approximately 97 per cent of the country’s retail payments, which exceed $500 billion,” said Somaia in a press release. Read the full story