Reliance funds S-commerce co Suvidhaa

MUMBAI: Suvidhaa Infoserve Pvt Ltd (SIPL), a pioneer of the Services Commerce (“S-Commerce”)  in India, said that it has received funding from two leading global venture capital firms, Reliance Technology Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners India (NVP India). Reliance Technology Ventures directed the investment from one of its Group entities.

Suvidhaa, promoted by Paresh Rajde and initially funded by Shapoor Pallonji Mistry, will use the new capital to aggressively expand its portfolio of service offerings into vertical markets throughout India and enhance business development and marketing efforts.

Accordign to the press release, Suvidhaa brings “Services” to the doorstep of the Indian consumer. Consumers can now walk into their neighbourhood convenience / kirana stores and purchase all kinds of every day “Services” such as railway ticketing, mobile recharge, air ticketing, insurance payment, bill payment, bus ticketing, loan origination, movie ticketing and hundreds of other services which are in the pipeline. Suvidhaa makes this “S-Commerce” possible through its proprietary technology platform which seamlessly integrates these kirana stores to the various Services Provider’s systems.

Suvidhaa currently powers more than 4,000 local kirana stores across 15 states in over 100 cities with its S-commerce technology and plans to further expand to 20,000 franchisee outlets across the country by 2009. With minimal computer knowledge required, kirana store owners have found it very easy to sign up for and use the Suvidhaa platform. Further, kirana store owners are benefiting from increasing consumer footfalls and a steady source of additional income.

Suvidhaa has developed strong relationships with various top Indian corporates to deliver these services to consumers across India. Consumers can obtain services provided by leading companies including IRCTC for railway ticketing, all major airline companies such as Jet Airways, Kingfisher, Air India, SpiceJet, GoAir and IndiGo, telecom services such as Vodafone, Airtel, BSNL, Reliance, Idea, Tata and MTNL, more than 350 bus operators covering 5000+ routes, multiplexes such as AdLabs and Fun Cinema, leading financial services and insurance players such as LIC, ICICI Prudential, Reliance MF, UTI MF, Reliance Money, Kotak MF, LIC MF, SBI MF. Suvidhaa also supports bill payment for utility companies in areas such as Electricity, Gas, Telephones, Mobile, etc. Other services include education, filing of tax returns, e-Pooja services, credit card services etc. Suvidhaa will continue to launch number of innovative services on a monthly basis.

Explaining Reliance Technology Ventures’ investment, “We believe Suvidhaa, through its electronic distribution platform, provides a one-stop convenience of services to the end consumer. It has an outstanding vision to empower traditional outlets with technology, and complements their existing businesses by driving in more footfalls. We will continue to invest in such technology-driven and differentiated business models that strive to deliver maximum benefit to end consumers.” notes Harshal Shah, CEO, Reliance Technology Ventures Limited.

“We believe that the S-commerce space represents a significant opportunity and are impressed with Suvidhaa’s vision to address this space. Suvidhaa’s business model targets the Services sector and addresses the consumer’s needs related to accessibility, convenience and value in the consumption of every day Services. Additionally, Suvidhaa’s robust services platform delivers high performance, saves time and money and results in higher overall customer satisfaction. We believe Suvidhaa is poised for tremendous growth and success in the years to come,” notes Niren Shah, Managing Director, NVP India.

Paresh Rajde, Founder MD & CEO, Suvidhaa Infoserve notes, “We look forward to working with Reliance Technology Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners to aggressively expand our pan-India footprint and empower more retailers and service providers with our scalable services platform. As of date, we have signed up over 4,000 outlets across 15 states in 100 cities, and that is only the beginning.”

Suvidhaa’s ‘S-Commerce’ platform enables real-time transactions across multiple service providers. The platform has been tested for up to 1 million transactions per day.