Reliance Technology Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners India have invested an undisclosed amount in Mumbai-based Suvidhaa Infoserve Pvt Ltd, which has a technology that helps people make daily transactions such as railway ticketing, mobile recharge, air ticketing, insurance payment, bill payment, bus ticketing, movie ticketing and so on.
The company has already installed its devices in some 4,000 kirana stores. Suvidhaa's proprietary technology platform integrates these kirana stores to the various services providers' systems.
The company is backed by the Shapoorji Pallonji group and calls itself a services commerce (S-Commerce) firm. Suvidhaa’s services intends to allow customers to avail themselves of any service across any sector at single-window access points in a unique click-and-mortar set-up.
Suvidhaa plans to use the funds raised to expand its portfolio of service offerings into vertical markets throughout India and enhance business development and marketing efforts.
Suvidhaa plans to expand its presence in 100 cities and launch 20,000 franchisee outlets by March 2009. It currently has a presence in 4,000 local kirana stores. The storekeepers benefit from increasing footfalls in their stores and it also gives them an additional source of income.
Suvidhaa has been promoted by Paresh Rajde and initially funded by Shapoor Pallonji Mistry. Suvidhaa has tied up with IRCTC for railway ticketing and all the major airlines to provide its services. It also has tie ups with telecom services such as Vodafone, Airtel, BSNL, Reliance, Idea, Tata and MTNL and multiplexes such as AdLabs and Fun Cinema.
