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JiGrahak to raise $10 mn in VC funding

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Raghuvir Badrinath Chennai/ Bangalore

JiGrahak Mobility Solutions, the Bangalore-based mobile commerce service provider, is close to raising around $10 million through the venture capital route to fund its expansion plans. The company, which runs the mobile commerce service under the brand ‘ngpay’ is understood to have attracted interest of various venture capital funds, including Nexus Partners and others. The company has a subscriber base of 1.3 million and last year grew 25 per cent.

ngpay is amongst the largest malls on mobile. Through ngpay, consumers across India can shop, buy tickets, recharge, pay bills or bank from any basic mobile handset. Users can transact with 200-plus partners across 10 sectors with certified financial grade security.

 

Sourabh Jain, founder and CEO of JiGrahak, confirmed that they have received a lot of interest from various VC funds and strategic players, while declined to specify details. “There has been a lot of traction in our business and it is a market which will grow pretty fast,” he added. JiGrahak had earlier raised VC funds from Helion Venture Capital.

Nexus India Capital among the established venture capital funds with over $300 million under management investing across sectors with a focus on investing early and playing a formative role in developing the company. Investment size is up to $10 million in early-growth stage companies. Nexus also has a seed programme to support high potential entrepreneurs with breakthrough ideas with investment of up to $500,000.

The e-commerce and m-commerce scene has been on a sharp upswing in the recent past with the penetration of mobile phones exploding at a phenomenal pace in India. With 3G services starting to stabilise, m-commerce is expected to grow further. The mobile value-added services scenario has immense potential and growth will be driven mainly by mobile data (both on handsets and dongles / connected computing devices) contributing 54 per cent of the overall MVAS market by 2015. Non-voice revenues are expected to grow to contribute 51 per cent to overall incremental wireless revenues by 2015, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India — Analysys Mason Vision Document on Mobile VAS.

According to the report, Mobile VAS revenues form a large part of carrier revenues globally, in both the developed and emerging markets. In India too, multiple trends indicate an inflexion point for the MVAS industry in the near future. In addition to the direct revenue impact, the industry is also expected to have a widespread secondary impact on entrepreneurship and innovation in India.

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First Published: Aug 26 2011 | 12:53 AM IST

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