The Kamla Bhatt Show: MingleBox CEO, Kavita Iyer, on Social Networking and Weekly News Updates

06:29 | Kamla Bhatt | Oct 18th, 2006 7:16pm |

Social networking sites are popping up everywhere, and India is no exception. MingleBox is a Bangalore-based startup that allows members to have personalized web pages that includes their interests, blogs and photos. We have an exclusive interview with Kavita Iyer, CEO of MingelBox about her company and social networking in India.

With a $7 million in investment from venture capital firm Sequoia Capital India, Anurag Dod and Gaurav Mishra have launched a local search engine Guruji.com. Supposedly the first search engine of its kind to focus on the Indian Subcontinent, Guruji is designed to provide users with specifically Indian content.

Garnett & Helfrich Capital, a private equity firm specializing in venture buyouts, is expanding its operations to India. Garnett and Helfrich Capital have also acquired a controlling stake in Celunite, a privately-held company with headquarters in Sunnyvale, California and development centers in Pune and Hyderabad, India. The private equity firm’s new India office will be located in Mumbai. Formed in March 2004, Garnett & Helfrich Capital is a $350 million private equity fund focused exclusively on the emerging venture buyout segment for mid-sized technology spinouts.

Providence Equity Partners spent $400 million dollars and acquired 16 percent in Idea Cellular. Idea is the sixth-largest wireless operator in India The US-based Providence had been in discussions with Idea for nearly four months because of stalling over the valuation of the company. Now Idea is considering an IPO (initial public offer) for early next year. Idea Cellular currently has about 10 million users.

Mobile blogging is catching on in India .Reliance has launched mobile blogging in India. The new service lets users share their photos and videos. Reliance partnered with Hyderabad-based IMI Mobile to launch the mobile blog service.

Last week Ram Sriram of Sherpalo Ventures and an early Google-backer commented that finding local IT employees in India is a challenge. Google Inc. has trouble recruiting employees in Bangalore compared to other parts of the world. Sriram, a founding member of Google’s board of directors, cites lack of Web development skills as a major problem. There is also a shortage of middle managers and engineers.

Google India appoints a new CTO. Earlier this week, Google appointed a new Chief Technology Officer, who was previously CTO of Yahoo India’s R&D arm. Dr. Prasad Bhaarat Ram will be in charge of Google’s R&D work and will be based in Bangalore. Dr. Ram was previously with Xerox Parc and Rand Corporation in the USA.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 7:16 pm and is filed under PodTech, Enterprise 2.0, India, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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