DVD rental company gets $228, 000 from Angel Investors

After the Bangalore-based Seventymm.com, another online DVD rental company, this time in the nation’s capital, gets venture funding. Delhi-based Madhouse Media has closed an angel round of $228,000 (Rs. 1.05 crore) from Band of Angels in Delhi and Mumbai, and other couple of investors.

First-time entrepreneurs Sameer Guglani, Nandini Hirianniah and Ankur Agrawal founded the company in December 2004. Madhouse has both online and offline presence and it claims to be the only one to have such a model. The company is currently focused on North Indian markets – Delhi-NCR, Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali regions. It plans to do a national roll-out in the next two years.

It is currently working on some key business alliances to serve the customers better; one such alliance being with Netkode Solutions, which provides end to end technology solution to Hollywoodclicks.com, Singapore’s largest online DVD rental service. Netkode will work as a technology partner with Madhouse.

Matrix Partners India invests Rs. 20 crores in digital signage company vJive

Matrix Partners India has invested Rs. 20 crores in vJive, an out-of-home media and digital signage network owned by Digital Music India (DMI) Pvt. Ltd. has received a VC funding of Rs. 20 crores. This is the first of the tranches of an overall Rs 100 crores for the company. Matrix’s Avnish Bajaj has joined the board of directors of DMI.

This is Matrix’s fourth investment in the year. It had earlier invested $7 million in Seventymm.com, an online DVD rental company, $5.5 mn in Moods Hospitality, the owners of food chain Yo! China Restaurants, and an undisclosed sum in a stealth mode start-up Four Interactive.

Lightspeed invests $29.5m in Bangalore net companies

Venture capital investors are making a beeline for India. Following Texas Pacific Group Ventures and Sherpalo, Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund Lightspeed Venture Partners, with $1.5 bn of assets under management, has invested in two Indian companies – Mercantila and TutorVista – both based in Bangalore.

Mercantila, a collection of hundreds of online specialty stores serving the US and Canadian markets, has received funding upto $22.5 mn, while online tutoring and test preparation company TutorVista has received $7 mn.

Lightspeed has recently raised a $475 mn fund, one-third of which would be invested in assets outside the US. Israel, China and India would be major recipients of this allocation. India itself may see investments in the range of $50-100 mn. Lightspeed is keen to make a mark in the growing Indian market and intends to establish an Indian office in the coming 12 months.

Read more in The Economic Times, Red Herring and ContentSutra.com.

Matrix Partners Invests In Stealth Start-up Four Interactive

Matrix Partners is making investments and news by the day. After investing $7 mn in Seventymm.com, an online DVD rental company and $5.5 mn in Moods Hospitality, owner of the Yo! China brand of Chinese food outlets, the $ 150 mn cross-sector fund has bought an undisclosed stake in Bangalore-based stealth mode start-up Four Interactive. As per the company website, Four Interactive is “building easy to use services which lie at the intersection of mobile, content and web”. Four Interactive has been founded by ex-Microsoft execs Kiran Konduri and Shriram Adukoorie. Kiran Konduri was the founder of Zephyr Software, later acquired by Infospace. Shriram Adukoorie is the former country head for MSN India and South Asia.