N S Raghavan fund invests in mobile banking

Ojas Venture Partners, an early stage technology venture fund backed by N S Raghavan, co-founder and former joint managing director of Infosys Technologies, has invested in Tyfone Inc., a developer of a software and hardware platform for mobile banking, mobile contactless payments and retail merchant services. The terms of the financing were not disclosed.

Tyfone's US corporate headquarters is in Portland, Oregon. The company also has an Asia headquarters located in Bangalore. Ojas Ventures manages a $30 million fund based in Bangalore.

Tyfone will use the investment to scale its three areas of business - mobile banking, mobile payments including contactless payments and retail merchant relationship services in the US and international markets. The company will continue to ramp up global sales and operations teams, including operations in China.

Said Nadathur S Raghavan, "Tyfone's patented technology is focussed in its approach to mobile financial services. By utilising its technologies and leveraging key partner strengths, Tyfone is positioned to grow quickly in 2008."

Rajesh Srivathsa, managing partner of Ojas Venture Partners, added, "Tyfone has developed a technology to enable existing mobile phones to be used for 'wave-and-pay' contactless payments, facilitating retail financial services, which is set to grow rapidly."

Noted Tom Spitzer, chief executive officer, Tyfone's: "With this investment, we will have the teams and partners in place to roll out our modular, plug-and-play mobile banking, mobile contactless payments and retail merchant services platform to banks in the US and worldwide."

The other firms in the mobile payment space are JiGrahak, mChek, PayMate, Obopay, ngPay funded by companies like Helion Ventures, Sherpalo Ventures among others.