VCCircle

It seems Sequoia Capital India is backing George Zacharias, former Managing Director of Yahoo India, for a remote infrastructure management startup. This bit of news is however yet to confirmed by either Sequoia or Zacharias. VC Circle has emailed KP Balaraj, Managing Director of Sequoia in India, to confirm the news.

Zacharias himself has told Agencyfaqs that he is planning an IT startup, and nothing in consumer internet space. He is being quoted by the portal as saying: “The time is right to do one’s own thing. We (the founding group) are in the process of incorporating a company in the IT space.” The new venture would be unveiled in a few weeks, and it will be a technology company, the portal reported. Sources said that a few of his ex-colleagues at Yahoo India and Sify too are expected to join him.

Meanwhile, a commenter on this site also notes that Zacharias is backed by Sequoia, and it's not a consumer internet startup.

Sequoia has done a similar thing earlier too - picking the entrepreneur first and then back his venture whatever it's. They backed Naresh Ponnapa, a former top honcho of Hindustan Lever, even before the business plan for Indecomm Global Services was written. Now the Bangalore-based company employs about 1,400 people in business process services area such as office automation and so on.

Remote infrastructure management seems to be a good opportunity - considered a $70 billion opportunity, and there is still scope for more startups in that area. Only yesterday, Wipro announced the acquisition of an IT infrastructure management company Infocrossing for $600 million. In India, there are several companies like HCL Technologies (through HCL ISD) and Microland present in this area.