The Venture Intelligence Blog

Looks like the built-in business model in the mobile apps space (unlike the Internet where everything is expected to be free) is unleashing an entrepreneurial wave across the country. From the Business Today article: From New Delhi to Nagpur, Salem to Sonepat, companies developing apps are mushrooming everywhere. There are about 9,000 of them in India at present, estimates Convergence Catalyst, a research firm, all seeking a slice of the $8.5 billion global app revenue pie. Another estimate puts the number of app developers in India at 250,000. A few have already won global recognition: Aadhar Bhalinge, for instance, won $20,000 in a World Banksponsored online apps contest with his 'Smart Rickshaw Network' app, which proposed employing rickshaw wallahs in developing countries to feed live traffic updates into a subscription service. "It is very empowering," says Sharad Sharma, Chairman of the NASSCOM Product Forum, and a former CEO of Yahoo! India R&D. "Two ...

From the Press Release: GENWI (http://genwi.com), the leader in cloud publishing platforms for Tablets and Smartphones, has raised $4 million in Series A funding in a round led by Nexus Venture Partners (http://nexusvp.com). GENWI’s existing investors,Inventus Capital Partners and Quest Venture Partners, also participated in the round, bringing GENWI’s lifetime funding to $5.1 million including their original $1.1 million seed round raised in 2010. Offering one of the easiest and yet extremely powerful cloud-based platforms for publishing content on Tablets and Smartphones, GENWI has created and is actively managing over 1,500 apps for thousands of publishers. As opposed to custom building apps for each deviceform factor, GENWI affords publishers the ability to publish once and deliver interactive apps across all smart mobile devices - including iOS, Android, and HTML5. The GENWI Cloud Publishing Suite offers a mobile optimized, content aggregation and management system,a custom interf...