Intel Capital, the global venture capital investment arm of Intel Corporation, has invested an undisclosed amount in Bangalore-based Savaari Car Rentals and Mumbai-based disaster recovery management firm Perpetuuiti TechnoSoft Services Pvt Ltd. These investments are part of Intel Capital’s fresh $65 million commitment in more than 15 companies globally.
Savaari was set up in August 2006 by Gaurav Aggarwal, who holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology (the US) and a bachelor’s degree in Electronics from KJ Somaiya College of Engineering, Mumbai. The company targets corporate and retail users, as well as online travel agents whose clients mostly opt for local half-day/full-day trips, multi-day tours and also multi-city trips. While earlier, the focus was more on corporate clients, Savaari is currently focusing on retail customers.
In an interview with Techcircle.in in March this year, Aggarwal said that Savaari had completed 70,000 transactions till then. He also claimed that the average transaction size was more than Rs 5,000 back then.
The firm previously raised Rs 5 crore ($1 million back then) in funding from Inventus Capital in early 2012.
Founded in 2011 by two former Sanovi Technologies colleagues Sundar Raman and Rohil Sharma, Perpetuuiti provides business continuity planning and disaster recovery services/solutions to large and mid-sized organisations. With offices in India, the US, Dubai and Singapore, Perpetuuiti’s flagship product Continuity Patrol integrates organisational business requirements with IT infrastructure which enables CEOs and CIOs to take informed business decisions regarding disaster recovery policies. The company claims that its products are designed to work with complex business continuity planning (BPT) and IT environment without any technology limitations.
Currently, Perpetuuiti has close to 16 customers of which 10 are in India. Leading mobile service providers Idea Cellular and Vodafone are two of its key clients. Perpetuuiti has partnered with IT/software majors such as IBM, TCS, HP and Wipro to sell its solutions.
Intel Capital is mainly focusing on seed stage and growth stage companies for investments. Globally, it has so far invested more than $10.7 billion in over 1,250 companies in 52 countries. In India, Intel Capital has invested in over two dozen companies that include Happiest Minds, IndiaMART.com, ItzCash, One97, Yatra.com and TELiBrahma. Its recent investments include NxtGen Datacenter, Hungama, Healthkart and Snapdeal.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)