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Sequoia Capital Backs Social Networking Website Minglebox With $7 Million Funding
Thu, 05/03/2007 - 03:11 — Sahad P VThis is the first instance of institutional funding for an Indian social networking site. Minglebox, a Bangalore-based social networking company, has landed a huge $7 million round from Sequoia Capital India. The company is founded by Kavita Iyer, an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Delhi. She has earlier worked with ICICI Bank and Wipro.
R.Ramaraj, ex-CEO of Sify, has joined the board of Minglebox. The company has apparently repositioned itself as a hangout for college students. Now it remains to be seen how much consumer engagement can be brought about on the site, and also when the company can actually start making money.
There are more social networking websites like Yaari.com, which are yet to close funding. But the VCs are divided about the prospects of SN business models. Avnish Bajaj of Matrix Partners India has been critical of pure play - Myspace kind of - social networking business models in India. According to him, such sites are not solving a problem in India. It could be another 10 years for a site like Myspace to work here.
Alok Mittal of Canaan Partners argues here how SN can be tweaked in an Indian context. He suggests that a job site with an additional social networking feature could be an ideal application for India.
Comments
does someone really think community site approach to job site would work since people never are willing to disclose the insecurity in his or her present job ?
Agree with Alok Mittal, actually SN sites with a character will make the clinching difference. Check yaadonkabharat.com for example, pure genius !!
Arun, while the example of Google - Yahoo may be wrong but the fact remains that Sandeep funding Kavita's venture does indicate a bit of Direct-to-Home going on! Very unusual - given that the family stands to gain from Kavita's equity as well as Sandeep's carry.
Further, imagine a situation where you need to hire a new CEO in a year, not the easiest of decisions!
Anyway - no one said VC world made money by being being super-diligent about arm's length etc. - so am sure all this ceases to matter if this makes money for Sequoia.
One cannot go by the name of VC firm (Sequoia in this case) - the individuals in Youtube/Silicon Valley are so different from the ones in India.
Agree Yahoo may have invested. But Sequoia guy was on board for a long time and even they were clear competitors.
Haha... just FYI... Yahoo itself was one of the early investors in Google. In fact, Jerry Yang was one of Sergey and Larry's early mentors since they were all alums/students of Stanford.
(PS: Sorry Anonymous to be shooting down e'thing you say... its just one of those days :-) )
Btw, Kavita Iyer is married to one of the Sequoia guys. Talk about conflict of interest which Sequoia has always had - imagine sitting on the board of Yahoo and then leading an investment in Google!
Just to clarify things, in almost all cases, there is a drawdown schedule that is linked to most VC investments. Nobody is going to plunk down millions of $$$ in one go irrespective of how the company is going. What does get determined with each such commitment is the valuation and terms of investment. So, nothing novel or wrong about that.
Despite it's alleged pedigree, Sequoia Cap India is a hype-master along multiple dimensions...the size of the investment for one - the press release only speaks of a "commitment of $7 million" which is a lot different from actually putting in that amount up front - the real configuration is likely to be $1-2 million up front and a commitment to invest further amounts down the round. The idea behind not stating this clearly in the press is to whip up buzz - the same strategm was followed for the likes of Guruji.com
I completely second Alok when he mentions about the finetuning required for SN sites in India. Needlss to say that his job site (jobsahead) itself proved to be a milestone in Indian context. Now there is a need to club this concept with the SN. This could be a deadly combinaion. Any takers.... ???