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Well siting here writing this blog post and the rains come down lashing the Mumbai streets with thundering added to effect. Ironic isn’t it? When its raining money as well for startups as well. Two companies have recently raised funding and here are the updates on the invetsments.
Vanu raises 32 Million $ in venture funding

Vanu, [...]

Mumbai Angels has invested 2 crores in a Mobile Tv startup by the name of Apalya Technologies. According to their website Apalya Technologies is based in Hyderabad, India and its primary business is to aggregate premium entertainment content from many different content providers, and then optimize the same to be suitable for mobile viewing. Apalyas works on delivering the best possible mobile entertainment experience based on the type of the device and the kind of network being used.

Funding Funding and more funding.. Well soo much of it that its difficult to get by for a day till funding isn’t mentioned in a post. So here are all the funding updates :
 
Homeshop18 raises 21 M $ from Saif and Capital18
HomeShop18 which is Network18’s online and on-air retail marketing company and which launched the [...]

For those of you who are still scratching their heads thinking how that desktops in cybercafe’s be monetized think again! CLINCK is an Active Desktop Application which provides the user with shortcuts to Internet Browsers, Messengers, System Shortcuts, Search, News, Entertainment and Online Storage. And its monetized through ads. Currently Ideacts has advertisers like Dell, MSN, Cadbury Perk etc which suggests potential in the model.

Well this is surely funding windfall 2.0 and if the earlier windfall was cut short by the dotcom bust this windfall will take some stopping if at all it can stop. The money seems to be pouring in from all directions in India. Those who have invested stay invested and are looking to invest some more and those who had invested earlier and gone back seem to be returing with more money this time around. Atleast that seems to be the case if you look at Canaan Partners and Walden venture Capital.

India is possibly the only market in the world where there might be more Venture capitalists doing the round than entrepreneurs and there and very few platforms as well which help showcase entrepreneurs and give them access to VC’s. One such platform is Proto.in which is happening next month.
 
But back to my point of increasing [...]

India is very connected on linkedin as alexa statistics would show you that linkedin is ranked as the 144th most popular site in India (which is higher than its global rank of 191) contributing about 6.8% to the overall traffic on linkedin second only to the United States. So I do expect some India specific applications/additions to linked in over time.

On the whole it does seem that there is potential and paymate seems to be doing all the right things for an early mover in a nascent market i.e. raising enough money, doing multiple tie ups and in general leading the industry. But funding along with its pro’s has its cons as well. A funded startup could become an alienated startup..

Venture Hacks, a blog on entrepreneurship has launched what it calls the Recommended feature. Well as the name goes, the service helps the new entrepreneurs seek recommendations from people that ether know them or have used their service. Founded by Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi, Venture Hacks plans to make the process of reference checking smoother by presenting a Twitter-like system where you can make a profile and others can follow you. There can be recommendations from people who know you.

Moving on from the “cash prizes” handed over to the Business Plan competition winners, the business schools have now moved to awarding the winners by actual funding - something that makes much more sense for wannabe entrepreneurs.
 
IIM-Calcutta’s annual business plan competition i2I 2008 will have Seedfund considering investments in two of the winning teams - [...]

The IIT-Bombay campus on Sunday was a hub of activities as hundreds of delegates descended to attend the E-Summit, organized by IIT-Powai. Organized by the E-Cell, was an event to discuss the different aspects of the emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem in India.
 
The introductory speech the head of IIT focused on how the new age entrepreneurs and [...]

WATShow is Back! This week we bring you gyaan from the recently funded startup Komli.com’s (An Ad Network which also owns Pubmatic.com) Founder & CEO Amar Goel. Amar spoke about the following
What is Pubmatic?
What is the Revenue Model of Pubmatic?
What do Venture Capitalists look for in Entrepreneurs?
Check the WATShow out below (Turn your Speakers ON)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0Gh1pfnP78

Hope [...]

There is news for every one willing to start up. Recently Yahoo India announced their new strategy to help young entrepreneurs. Yahoo wants to invest its fund in untouched areas like Indian food, health and nutrition etc.
 
“We are interested in partnering with entrepreneurs who would develop some applications that can be leveraged through Yahoo,” [...]

Matrix Partners invest in Kijiji
 
Matrix Partners India has invested in Indian mobile classified startup Kijiji.com. Kijiji India, lauanched in 2005, is an online website that caters to a local community in a particular city. It offers services “to buy or sell a used car, look for an apartment on rent, buy or sell a house, [...]

A report by Venture Intelligence says Venture Capital firms invested around $543 million in India in 2007. A total of 98 companies were invested in, majority of them being the seed-level and stage 1 funding.
 
Sudhir Sethi, Director of US-IVCA and founder, chairman and managing director of IDG Ventures India said,
 
”With strong interest among Limited [...]