Startupcentral has an interview with Alok Mittal of Canaan Partners on the $45 million first round funding led by his firm for Wipro veteran and Mindtree Co-founder Ashok Soota's new IT Services venture.
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The business model draw for us (Canaan) was the outsourcing play. We already have a couple of portfolio companies (iYogi and UnitedLex) in that area. As far as the software services sector is concerned, in the past, significant shifts in information technology spends have created space for new companies. There is a shift taking place now in terms of enterprises in the US and Europe adopting cloud and mobility-based solutions. We think Happiest Minds has the potential to grab a large slice of this market.
Will they work closely with some of your India and global portfolio companies which are in the same area?
Absolutely. In fact, the founders have been very diligent about walking through both our and Intel Capital’s portfolio companies. They’ve picked a dozen that they could partner with. Their core differentiation is going to lie in the solutions that they come up with. Canaan has a number of computers in the cloud computing area. For instance, we have one that is in the area of testing for the cloud. Happiest Minds will look to partner with such companies to create their own solutions.