Aroon Purie (pictured, right), chairman and editor-in-chief at The India Today Group, India’s largest magazine publisher by revenue, spoke today at the 37th World Magazine Congress in London. At a panel discussion on Global Economic and Media Trends: Riding the Storm with William T. Kerr, chairman of the board, Meredith…

Early stage venture capital firm Ojas Venture Partners has invested an undisclosed amount in Delhi-based CoCubes, a mangement consulting firm. The firm is an online platform which aims to bring college and companies together for campus recruitment. Gautam Balijepalli, Principal at Ojas, confirmed the investment to VCCircle. He refused to…

Sequoia Capital and Nexus India Capital backed What’s On India Media Ltd (WOIML) is in the process of getting a licence to uplink non news and current affairs television channel in the country. Mumbai-based WOIML has an electronic programme guide (EPG) which aggregates programming information from hundreds of TV channels.…

Its existing backers - KPCB, Sherpalo Ventures and Nexus India Capital - have also participated in this round. Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) Ventures, the venture capital arm of wireless technologies and data solutions firm Qualcomm Inc, has invested $9 million in CE Infosystems, reports PTI (Via Economic Times). For Delhi-based CE…

Rx HealthCare Magic, which runs the portal HealthcareMagic.com, has raised its first round of funding of $2.5 million from Accel India, VCCircle has learned. Kunal Sinha, founder and CEO of Rx HealthCare Magic, has confirmed the investment. The funding will be released in tranches as company meets its milestones. Bangalore-based…

ValueFirst raised its first round of $250k in 2006 from Rajesh Jain’s personal investment firm Emergic Ventures. ValueFirst Messaging, a Delhi-based mobile messaging services provider, has raised series B funding of $6 million from venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA). In 2006, the company raised its first round of…

In what could be the beginning of the consolidation of mobile value added services companies, Mobile2Win, a leading VAS player, has been acquired by another VAS player, Chandigarh-based Altruist Group. As part of the all-stock deal, the venture capital investors and promoters in Mobile2Win will pick up a 10% stake…

Web18’s chief technology officer Varun Singh has confirmed what we reported last week. “I have put in my papers at Web18 and i’m leaving to start my own company,” Singh said. Singh, 27, has set up ScalArc Inc., a Delaware, US-incorporated consulting firm that will help web companies optimize infrastructure…

The local classifieds space in India continues to attract investment. Venture fund Helion Venture Partners has announced an investment of Rs 20 crore (about $4.2 million) in GETIT Infoservices. Delhi-based GETIT is a producer of yellow pages and directories in India, and has also ventured into digital offerings in the…

Sequoia had invested $2.2M in Apnaloan in early 2007. It is one of the oldest loan origination portals. Apnapaisa Pvt Ltd, the company which owns financial intermediary portals Apnaloan.com and Apnainsurance.com, has raised an undisclosed investment in its second round of funding from JAFCO Asia and the existing investor Sequoia…

According to sources, more than half the $23M investment has gone to mobile VAS player One97 Communications. Intel (NSDQ: INTC) Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of chipmaker Intel, has invested a total of $23 million in three Indian companies. The investments are in One97 Communications (a Delhi-based mobile value…

Mercatus, an angel investment fund, is looking at investing in software product firms, retail & cleantech. Singapore-based early stage venture capital firm Mercatus Capital has closed two investments in in India. The fund has invested undisclosed amounts in I-Flapp Technologies and Lucid Software. I-Flapp develops mobility solutions which help one…

The company claims to have more than 1000 stores live on their platform. Hyderabad based Reasoning Global eApplications Ltd, a company that helps drive internet and mobile traffic to retail stores, has raised $1 million from UK based high networth individuals.The funds raised will be utilised for expanding the marketing…

It’s a boomtime investment during a slowdown. Bollywood portal Chakpak.com which hopes to make money from advertising and merchandising has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Canaan Partners and the existing seed partner, Accel India, formerly Erasmic Venture Fund. ET puts the funding amount at $5 million. What prompted…

The firm expects a monthly turnover of Rs. 84,00,000 by April 2009 by covering 10% of the total market share. Three month old startup CashURdrive has attracted a lot of VC attention. VC Hunt and a Delhi based media house are close to investing around Rs 2.5 crore in CashURdrive,…

Prashant Prakash, Partner, Accel India, says only very high quality biz plans will get funded now. Accel India, the new avtar of Erasmic Venture Fund, the Bangalore-based early and seed stage fund, recently closed their second fund with a corpus of $60 million. Erasmic earlier managed about $10 million and…

There will be no significant shift in the investment strategy for the new fund. While there are almost all the funds targeting the late stage, growth capital investing and even PIPE ( private investments in public equity) investing, here is a VC fund which has raised capital to do seed…

Carwale had raised money from Seedfund in 2006, and Sierra Ventures is one of limited partners in Seedfund. Auto classifieds portal CarWale.com has raised funding of upto $7 million from Sierra Ventures. In 2006, the firm raised funding from Seedfund, diluting about a 30% stake. Mohit Dubey, CEO of CarWale…

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…