JumpStartUp & Infinity Ventures invest $ 1.5 million in Qsupport

WhiteArrow News Service, November 2000

QSupport, the Bangalore based online support solutions company, today announced the infusion of a fresh round of funding to the tune of $ 1.5 million. The new investments, the result of a co-investment decision between JumpStartUp and Infinity Ventures, will be deployed towards the companies’ international market expansion and infrastructure development efforts. Jumpstart up is investing a million dollars while Infinity Ventures is investing $ 0.5 million.

QSupport provides online support services to users of PCs, popular PC applications, PDAs Intelligent Wired and Wireless Enabled devices and other devices in the computing arena. The support services include advisory & trouble-shooting, self-help, automated tools and knowledge databases while the delivery channels include email, web chat, voice and remote control. Currently QSupport supports over 500 applications across PCs/ notebooks PDAs and mobile devices.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Saumil Majumdar, Founder & President, QSupport Technologies, said, " QSupport was conceptualised to address the opportunity represented by the usage problems of the average computing device user. Since the launch of our services earlier this year, we have already built up a database of over 60,000 unique solutions for computing usage issues. Q support provides user centric usage support to enterprises worldwide on 24 X 7 basis. The infusion of fresh capital further endorses our conviction in the global market opportunity and will enable us to roll out our services in markets worldwide "

The fresh capital will be deployed towards funding the company’s expansion plans in markets abroad, specifically the U.S and European markets. The company has already established relationships with system integrators in the US and the UK. Currently, the company’s registered user base comprises users from over 23 countries. In India major clients currently include Wipro (Peripherals and Home PCs), Compaq, Satyam Infoway Netcracker, Zeenext among others. The company will also shortly announce relationships with some other leading enterprises.

Explaining the investment decision, Mr. Sanjay Anandaram, Managing Director, Jumpstart Up, said, " The rapid increase in usage of computing devices worldwide translates into a huge global market opportunity. Today an average individual in the West carries at least two to three devices (cellphones, PDAs and notebooks). Along with the increase in the number and types of devices like PDAs, cellphones, notebooks etc, has been an increase in the complexity of applications on these devices. This opens up a huge global opportunity for support for these applications. In fact, each one of us is a potential user of this service. QSupports unique focus on this market, together with the comprehensive knowledge base, processes and young enthusiastic and charged team that the company already has in place, ensures that the company is ideally poised to capitalise on this global opportunity. All these factors makes QSupport a winning combination and we are extremely happy to be part of this."

Added Ms. Bharati Jacob, Investments Principal, Infinity Ventures, " QSupport represents to us the ideal mix of intellectual and technological resources. These resources assume more significance given the potential in the market that they are seeking to address. Our investment in QSupport reiterates our conviction that the company has the potential to become a global leader in its area of operations.

QSupport

Established in February 2000, QSupport is a leading computing usage advisory services company. Operating out of Bangalore, Indias Silicon Valley, QSupport provides advisory services for any computing or internet usage problem. It has state of the art support centers and highly trained support engineers working 24 hours a day and 365 days a year answering queries of thousands of users throughout the world. The domain focus, team experience, intellectual and economic advantages of operating out of India gives QSupport opportunities to offer high quality yet cost effective solutions.

JumpStartUp

The JumpStartUp Venture Fund (www.jumpstartup.com) is a Bangalore based $ 45 million private, independent, professionally managed VC fund. It provides smart, high quality, early stage capital to new and young companies in the technology and technology enabled sectors primarily in India. The Principals are Kiran Nadkarni, Sanjay Anandaram, and K. Ganapathy Subramanian. JumpStartUp is backed by an investor team comprising of top professionals from Silicon Valley and top institutions from Asia, Europe and the U.S. The institutional investors in the JumpStartUp Venture Fund include, Singapore based Vertex Group, Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, PPM Ventures (The VC arm of Prudential Insurance), GE Capital, and California based Silicon Valley Bank. In addition, the fund has a number of well known individual investors from companies like Exodus, Cisco, Yahoo, Netscape, Sun, Infospace, Nortel, Intel, Junglee/Amazon, apart from partners of U.S. VC firms.

Infinity Venture Fund

Infinity Venture Fund, an institutionalised venture fund that was set up just so that a good idea would not languish for lack of a nurturing environment. The company’s focus is on products and services that take advantage of technology, internet, new-media, telecommunications and convergence, to create defensible barriers to entry, exploit market opportunities and build additional scale and scope. The Infinity team provides a unique mix of entrepreneurial, operational, financial, technical, and investment expertise. The successful track record, extensive industry knowledge, and vast network of contacts worldwide create the unique opportunity of not only sourcing proprietary deals but also building operational value and creating exit opportunities. Infinity has a corpus of Rs 130 crore with the list of corporate investors including high-profile Indian businesses such as Tata Sons, Bajaj Auto, Pidilite and DCM Shriram. The fund has also attracted big corporates in the US and the whos who of the IT industry as investors with the list including GMO Emerging Markets, Digital Century, iCore Capital, Libra Fund, the Abu Dhabi Bank and the Laxmi Mittal group. Silicon Valley-based angel investors Kanwal Rekhi, Suhas Patil, chairman, Cirrus Logic, KB Chandrashekhar of Exodus Communications, B V Jagadeesh, COO, Exodus Communications, Ashok Narsimhan of Infospace and Anil Godwani, ex-Netspace have also contributed to the fund.