Bharti Telesoft Raises $13.5M
Bharti Telesoft, which provides services and products to several leading telecom companies, said on Monday it had received $13.5 million in a third round of funding.
Investors include Westbridge Capital Partners, a leading Indian venture capital fund; as well as Sequoia Capital and Cisco Systems. Bharti raised $3.1 million in two earlier rounds from the founders and Bharti Enterprises, the leading telecommunications vendor in India.
India
Bharti, a Red Herring Asia 100 company, positions itself as a one-stop shop for major Indian cellular providers, offering messaging, call management, billing, and customer service.
It has also developed mobile point-of-sale technology, rerouted wireless infrastructure to speed delivery of messages, and revised roaming charges to make roaming more appealing to customers.
Bharti Telesoft provides value-added products and services for mobile carriers in different parts of the world. The company’s list of blue-chip customers includes France Telecom, Egypt’s Orascom, Amsterdam-based Celtel, Philippines-based GlobeTelecom, and Russia’s MTS.
France TelecomRussia
As software services giants like Wipro and Infosys Technologies increasingly concentrate on the global market, telecommunications service providers have focused on the booming local market.
Infosys Technologies
While the telecom market is not expected to become saturated for at least another five years in India, companies have been looking to extend their footprint globally. Bharti Telesoft’s systems are already being deployed in 25 countries, but the company hopes to increase that reach even further.
India
The company plans to use the investment to fund acquisitions, enhance product development, and expand further internationally.
“This investment will provide an added impetus to achieve our aim of being the leading global provider of innovative products, solutions, and services to the telecom sector,” said Bharti Telesoft CEO Sanjiv Mital.
Powerful Benefactors
The company has the advantage of benefiting from strategic guidance from Bharti Enterprises, the No. 1 mobile phone operator in India. Its Airtel brand, a GSM (global system for mobile communications) service, has the largest number of mobile phone subscribers in India.
India
Sequoia Capital made a strategic investment in Bharti Telesoft to help it become more of a global player in the field of mobile value-added services.
“This is the first time we are investing in an Indian company,” said Douglas Leone, a partner in Sequoia Capital. “We have been very impressed with Bharti Telesoft and their innovative products, as well as how they have grown their business in various countries.
Sequoia has so far invested in several cross-border companies that have headquarters in the United States or elsewhere but operate mainly in India.
About Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital provides venture capital funding to founders of startups who want to turn business ideas into companies. As the "Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs", Sequoia Capital's Partners have worked with innovators such as Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Bob Swanson of Linear Technology, Sandy Lerner and Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Dan Warmenhoven of Network Appliance, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo!, Jen-Hsun Huang of nVIDIA, Michael Marks of Flextronics, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of YouTube and Dominic Orr and Keerti Melkote of Aruba Wireless Networks. To learn more about Sequoia Capital visit www.sequoiacap.com.
Contact:
Surendra Jain
SEQUOIA CAPITAL
sk.jain@sequoiacap.com
