MobME plans to raise $15 million

Company to use funds to incubate startups in financial tech and Big Data space

MobME Wireless Solutions, supported by Infosys Kris Gopalakrishnan, is planning to raise about $15 million. Sanjay Vijayakumar, co-founder and chief executive officer said the founders had raised $0.5 million when they were in college and bootstrapped the company to over Rs 100 crore in annual revenue and Rs 25 crore in annual profits over the next six years. The initial products were in the telecom sector. Vijayakumar claims Gopalakrishnan is a mentor to the founder of MobME.

In 2012, MobME raised a larger angel round of $3 million and then started incubating new products in the FINTECH (Financial Technology Space). The first such product is Chillr, an innovative peer to peer mobile payments company which has now raised $6 million from Sequoia Capital.

MobME has now morphed into a mobile-internet incubator. It has two more products currently under customer traction in the FINTECH and BIG Data space, said Vijayakumar.

The company would be raising more capital to scale up these incubated ideas by end of year. “We are planning to raise around $15 million,” he said.

MobME is the Host Institute of Startup Village. MobME drives the vision and execution of Startup Village and also the day to day operations.

“We believe that Startup India brings Skill India, Digital India and Make in India together. Our own experience as student entrepreneurs help us understand the needs of students much better and helped to created the first version of Startup Village which received over 7000 applications,” said Vijayakumar.

His company is now building an online digital platform called SV.CO as a learning platform for first time founders to build start-ups. Gujarat Technological University has come on board as the first partner to give accreditation to this learning.

This unique blend brings engineering education as well as the entrepreneurship learning into one dynamic stream where the outcome would be either creative startups or creative and skilled employees, said Vijayakumar.

“Our aim is that we will be present in India and Silicon Valley as the new products like the Big Data product are global in nature. The company would retain its Indian value and go to markets where customers are for accelerated growth,” he added.

MobME has over 200 employees now within the parent and subsidiaries.