Venture-funded Gridstone Research, a financial research platform company co-founded by former Infosys global sales head Basab Pradhan, has folded up in the aftermath of the global economic crisis.
Gridstone, founded by a group of former Infy professionals, has exited the business after selling its assets to two US-based financial services companies.
Gridstone Research, a financial technology, data products and services company serving the information needs of financial services companies, operated out of New York, San Francisco and Mumbai.
The company has announced the move, in its website, saying, “Perputo, Inc., a Delaware Corporation doing business as Gridstone Research and its wholly owned subsidiary in India, Perputo Content Management Pvt. Ltd., ceased doing business on April 15, 2010.
Gridstone, which was founded in 2005, received funding from venture capital firms Helion Venture Partners, Charles River and Maverick Capital. However, the quantum of investments made by the venture investors was not disclosed. David Singer, director, Maverick Capital, Helion Advisors managing director Ashish Gupta and Charles River director Izhar Armony held board seats in the firm.
In response to a VCCircle query on the development, Ashish Gupta, Managing Director, Helion Advisors, said: “Gridstone Research got impacted by the global slowdown of the financial services sector and have decided to exit the business by selling their assets to two large US based Financial Services Companies.” VCCircle could not reach the management of Gridstone Research at the time of posting this article.
Incidentally, around the time when the global economic crisis was peaking, Gridstone co-founder Basab Pradhan quit as CEO in March 2009 but he continued to remain on the board as chairman. According to an earlier VCCircle report, quoting from Pradhan’s blog post, "Gridstone’s market, the investment managment industry, has been going through one of its worse downturns ever. Needless to say, budgets have been slashed and Gridstone had to take cost-reduction measures to adjust to the new reality."
Consequent to Pradhan’s exit from the post, Gridstone co-founder P R Ganapathy assumed the role of CEO. Gridstone’s principal co-founders P R Ganapathy, Ramesh Gopalan, Nitin Gupta, Sandeep Shroff and Basab Pradhan have served stints at Infosys Technologies.
