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November 22, 2008

Myntra Raises $5 Million From NEA-IndoUS, IDG Ventures India
The customised gifts and merchandise space is hotting up as eYantra, a similar firm, recently raised $3.1 mn. Myntra Designs, a Bangalore-based company that provides customised gifts and merchandise, has raised $5 million in its Series A round of funding. The round is led by NEA-Indo US Ventures and IDG Ventures India, and Erasmic in it’s new avatar of Accel Partners is a returned backer. Erasmic merged with Silicon Valeey based Accel Partners earlier this year. The firm raised angel funding from Erasmic Venture Fund and other investors like Sasha Mirchandani of Mumbai Angels last year. Vani Kola from NEA Indo-US and Sudhir Sethi from IDG Ventures will join the board of Myntra. Another firm in this segment that recently raised funding was Hyderabad based eYantra, which raised $3.1 million in a Series A from Ventureast and Argonaut. Myntra is a website from where you can design your own T-shirts, mugs, key chains and other consumer products and then buy them. The firm plans ti use the funds raised for geographical and product portfolio expansion, and also expand its team. “We have identified products for both our individual and institutional market segment,” said Mukesh Bansal, CEO and Founder of Myntra. Myntra’s Expansions Plans The firm currently has a presence in Delhi and Bangalore, and plans to expand to top 10 cities in India over the course of next two years. The cities where it plans to have a presence in near future are Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad. “We plan to go to a new city every 3-6 months, and after 3-4 markets we plan a new city every quarter,” says Bansal. Myntra was formed in 2006, and it started with an online presence. Since then the firm has expanded to corporate and institutional clients. Now, two-thirds of its revenues come from institutional clients, while the rest come from individual online users. Currently Myntra has 20 products on offer for the online individual customers, while it has 50 products on offer for institutional clients. So far the it has served around 100 companies and 30 colleges, and it plans to use that experience to expand its product range. “We plan to have a more focused catalogue for every segment of the company and every occasion,” says Bansal. “This would lead to better offerings and better margins,” he adds. Myntra also plans to expand its team to 150 people from the present 50, and Bansal feels its a good time to hire talents. With the slowdown in the economy, good talents will be available at the reduced prices, he says. But isn’t Myntra feeling impact of the slowdown? “We are a very small company so it’s too early to feel the affect,” Bansal says. In fact, October was the best month for Myntra in terms of revenues, which were three times the monthly average of last three months. The company also recently crossed annual revenue of Rs 4 crore. But Bansal is in touch with reality and admits they are bound to feel the impact. “But we are not revising any of our forecasts for the next two years,” he adds. Merchandising Space Hots Up The fact that two companies in this space have got funding in a period 3-4 months says a lot about the opportunity that merchandising and on demand personalisation presents. Online photo printing companies also overlap into this space. Then there are also corporate gifting companies that are active in this segment. There are a number of photo printing firms that have raised venture capital funding. One of the oldest photo portals is ZoomIn, which is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Sherpalo Ventures. Then there is also Printo, which has received funding from Sequoia Capital and Seed Fund. Bangalore-based Picsquare also recently went offline and received an undisclosed investment from city-based Bhola Digital Lab. Another portal is Banglore-based Canvera, which raised Series A funding in May this year from Footprint Ventures, and joined by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mumbai Angels and a couple angels from the UK. This space has also seen some M&A activity, as Snapfish.com, a Hewlett & Packard-owned online photo printing site, acquired an Indian online photo printing website MeraSnap.com. This story was provided by our content partner VCCircle Our streamlined mobile application for the BlackBerry and other smart devices brings you the latest headlines quickly on the go. Click here to download.
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India TV Floats India TV Interactive, Ropes in Arvind Mahendru
Rajat Sharma’s India TV has floated a new media firm – India TV Interactive Pvt. Ltd. (ITVI). ITVI will be the vehicle for India TV to foray into various new media platforms and value-added services. Simultaneously, India TV has also appointed Arvind Mahendru as Senior VP (New Media). Mahendru who was earlier a Managing Partner with GroupM will report to Managing Director Ritu Dhawan here. He will be responsible for growing the group’s business on the internet, mobile, and interactive television platforms. He was earlier working with Bharti Airtel Limited (2005-07) as GM, Marketing where he headed content acquisition for broadcast TV, games and international film based content for VOD services for the IPTV, broadband, mobile and DTH platforms. Prior to Bharti, he worked as Chief Manager, Broadband, Times Internet Limited (India Times) where he was responsible for distribution, content planning and acquisition. He was in charge of the first ever IPTV Product pilot in India understanding consumer insights, product and consumer value propositions, and looked after the “8888″ short code service. India TV’s launch of ITVI is a part of the trend wherein media houses are diversifying and launching their content on new platforms including mobile, internet and IPTV so as to leverage the new set of users there and get maximum revenue out of their existing and new media content. Film production houses are even tying up with mobile content aggregators and games websites and mobile carriers for film related content distribution. Rajeev Shukla’s Bag Films is another media company that has ventured into the digital media domain, while established players like Network18 and NDTV have a significant presence in this domain. This story was provided by our content partner VCCircle
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