VCs back iYogi's Spanish strategy

The Gurgoan-headquartered company provides online subscription-based technical support services offered directly to consumers and small businesses across a wide range of computing and communications devices and software. It operates via a platform called Digital Service Cloud, which allows customers in different geographies to collaborate on tasks and establish automated processes. 

IYogi currently offers its service in English across 12 centers in India, the Philippines and the UK, and claims to serve users in 11 countries, covering India, North America, Australia, the UK and the Middle East. The company - which claims to serve around 2.5 million customer globally - is now launching a Spanish service with a view to tapping customers in both in Spain and Latin America.

For this Axon Partners Group - which has a presence in Latin America and Spain as well as India - was an ideal partner. The GP contributed $5 million to a $28 million round of investment that also included Madison Capital India and existing investors Canaan Partners, SVB Capital Partners, SAP Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ). IYogi is still in talks with other investors with the intention of raising a full Series E round of $55 million.

"Our thinking was to look at how we could expand into other geographies by going beyond just English, so we started looking at Spanish language support," says Vishal Dhar, president Marketing at iYogi, who co-founded the company alongside Uday Challu in 2007.

"We now understand the kind of companies we want to work with and what capabilities they have - apart from the capital - in terms of geographical spread. The partnership with Axon accelerates our market entry as we can leverage their knowledge and network."

This latest investment brings the total amount raised by iYogi to $85.5 million. The company received its first round of funding in April 2007 as Canaan and SVB put in just over $3 million. SAP entered at the Series B stage, worth $9.5 million in July 2008, and then DFJ joined the incumbents for the $15 million Series C in early 2010. Later that year, the same group of investors committed a further $30 million.

IYogi is looking to double its revenue in the next 24 months, having already launched in Spain through a partnership with local carrier Telefonica and set up a delivery center in the country. The eventual plan is to take the company public.

"We first evaluated the possibility of a public offering a couple of years ago," says Dhar. "Now we are actively looking at that the possibility of a NASDAQ IPO in the next 12-24 months."

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• Topics
• Europe
• South Asia
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• Axon Partners Group
• Madison India Capital
• India
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• Venture