Capillary Technologies, a startup company by IIT Kharagpur alumni that offers mobile-based customer management solutions for retail, is the India winner of Qualcomm Ventures' international business plan competition, Qprize. With that, Bangalore-based Capillary has received $100,000 as seed money for the company.
The company, which offers services for apparel retailers now, will invest the money in branching out into other verticals. "We are planning to add coffee retail and quick service restaurants, consumer durables and mobile outlets, entertainment and leisure and grocery retail," said Aneesh Reddy, co-founder and director of business development, Capillary Technologies Pvt Ltd. The other co-founder is Krishna Mehra, who is the director of technology at the firm.
Started in November 2008, Capillary has nine clients in its portfolio with over 200 outlets across 75 cities in India. Its clients include Madura Garments brands like Peter England and People; Future Group promoted Indus-League Clothing brands like John Miller, Urban Yoga and Jealous 21; and Numero Uno among others. The company also offers services, which help retailers to reward their customers instantly while shopping in the store.
Qualcomm Incorporated is a Nasdaq-listed company engaged in developing wireless technologies, products and services. Through its QPrize competition, the company offers $100,000 seed funding each to four semi finalists selected to compete for the Grand Prize. The other three semi-finalists will be selected from North America, Europe and China. The Grand Prize winner will receive another $150,000 funding, totaling $250,000 venture financing for the company.
The Grand Prize winner will be selected at Qualcomm Ventures CEO Summit, which is scheduled to be held on November 3, 2009 in San Diego, California.
Apart from Capillary, the seven other semifinalists which competed for regional QPrize competitions in India include Birds Eye Technologies, a Mumbai-based company offering GPS enabled vehicles for traffic monitoring; Edutor Technologies, a Hyderabad-based portable learning device manufacturer for one-to-one tutoring and personal learning; Nimble Wireless, a Chennai-based low bandwidth wireless video surveillance provider; Optimystix, a Mumbai-based company offering location based real time classifieds on mobile; Svara, a Delhi-based mobile and audio based learning system; Virtual Wire Technologies, a Delhi-based low power wireless system for short range HD video distribution; and Xurmo Technologies, a Bangalore-based mobile social network platform offering real time personalised information.
