Funding Updates: MChek – Nexus | Nokia Growth Partners – Web 18
Funding continues in the Indian space. Though its still more of middle to late stage funding that seems to be filling up the Indian digital media space. Here are two recent deals. One in the mobile space and one in the internet space. Here are the updates:
mChek Raises 2nd Round Of Funding From Nexus Capital
mChek is a mobile payment player from Bangalore. It links your mobile phone to your credit card allowing you to make payments via mobile. We’ve covered some news about mChek before. Now, it has raised a second round of venture capital funding from Nexus India Capital.
Nexus has invested around $5-8 million. mChek had raised its earlier round from Draper Fisher Juvertson (DFJ) which has also participated in this deal. In 2006, mChek raised $5 million in the first round of funding led by Draper Fisher Juvertson (DFJ). It was looking at raising $5- $15 million in its second round of funding.
The mobile payment space has seen a lot of funding over the last two years. Players like Paymate have Sherpalo backing them and have raised over 10 million dollars while NGpay (Jigrahak) has Helion which has invested 2.2 million. But the big fish among all of them is Obopay which raised over $70 million from Nokia this year.
This amount of funding is only proof of the 500+ million subscriber opportunity which is represented by the Indian Telecom market. And payments being a utility based need is the first one to receive traction in the future for sure. Gartner, the american research firm have evaluated that the mobile payment space is all set to grow by over 70%
Nokia Growth Partners Fund Web18
Nokia Growth Partners, the global investment arm of mobile handset-manufacturer Nokia, will invest $10 million (around Rs 47.8 crore) in Web18 Holdings-the internet arm of Television18.
Web18 runs several portals like tech2.com, moneycontrol.com, commoditiescontrol.com, ibnlive.com, in.com, cricketnext.com, poweryourtrade.com, biztech2.com, and jobstreet.com among the others. A lot of the websites are tied with the other existing arms of tv18 including their impressive hold over the broadcasting space (CNBC18, CNN-IBN). Web18’s been trying to improve it’s standing in the web space.
The company had initial plans of launching an IPO and getting listed in the US markets. However, the downturn in the US economy not only led to the company posting unprecedentedly high losses. “We had filed on the Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO offering but that will have to wait for some time as the US markets are not conducive,” said R D S Bawa, Chief Financial Officer of Network18.
Web18 had earlier got funding worth $10 million from Tracer Capital. Here’s the story.
Though they presently have no plans of adding any more websites to their arsenal, they plan to ramp up their hold over the currently existing portals. There seems to be sum buzz about TV18 as a whole doing badly. There was an article in Money Life about the same. So what will Web18 produce with $10 million? We’ll just have to wait and watch.
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