Norwest Venture Partners Invests $10 Million in Web 2.0 Pioneer Sulekha.com

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Sulekha.com, the first and largest online social media and local commerce destination for Indians, today announced Promod Haque's global technology venture capital firm, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP)'s Series A investment of $10 million in the company. Sulekha.com, the leading destination for Indians to interact and transact with their peers and businesses, connects millions through its portfolio of highly popular, interactive services in the areas of social media (blogs, groups and networking), and local commerce (classifieds, yellow pages and events) in 25 cities in India and worldwide.

As Internet usage continues to become more pervasive in India, so does the need for consumers to leverage the Internet to exchange opinions, educate one another and trade/purchase products and services in a variety of vertical industries. The Internet is about "democratization," and it is a mass medium with the power to group, educate and target consumers and businesses along multiple dimensions. Sulekha.com, a trailblazer in integrating social media with local commerce, has been uniquely successful in integrating its user-generated media and commerce in 25 cities worldwide. Sulekha's global, interactive platform connects millions of Indians online, and serves hundreds of corporate customers and thousands of small to medium sized businesses. Sulekha.com features over 10 million pages of content, almost all of it contributed by hundreds of thousands of its members.

Sulekha.com plans to use the new capital to extend business development and marketing, primarily through alliances, and expand its service offerings into new vertical markets. Also announced today, Promod Haque, managing partner at NVP, has joined the Sulekha board of directors. Sulekha, founded and run by Satya Prabhakar, received prior funding from the Indigo Monsoon Group (IMG), led by Param Parameswaran and Harish Raghavan. IMG invests in early stage companies in the Indian Internet and Mobile domains.

"Sulekha has been a Web 2.0 company even during the Web 1.0 days. It has positioned itself at the vortex of three of the largest Internet mega-trends: India, Social Media and Local Commerce through industry-leading services including Blogs, Social Networks, Classifieds and Yellow Pages. While the management of Sulekha has done a great job of developing reach and revenue, the real explosive potential, both in online and mobile platforms, is still in front of us," said Promod Haque.

India - Powerful Growth Ahead
India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and Internet usage in India is dramatically increasing each month. Broadband adoption in India has been showing signs of explosive growth since mid 2005, and is growing at a rate of 30% a quarter according to industry estimates. Sulekha's target market is the 50 million online and 80 million mobile users today (numbers that are expected to grow to 100 million and 200 million users respectively in the next few years).

"NVP is one of the most reputed venture capital firms in the world with more than 45 years of experience in building successful companies. This, coupled with NVP's strong interest, many investments and relationships across various industries in India, made NVP a great choice for Sulekha as we pursue aggressive growth plans in the coming year," said Satya Prabhakar, Founder and CEO of Sulekha.com. "In particular, we look forward to working with Promod Haque who, with his valuable experience and vast global network, has helped numerous companies, both in U.S. and India, soar and succeed."

"The marriage of trusted member to member interactions and its application to classifieds and business search/ratings holds incredible promise in spurring local commerce in India. Sulekha's successful track record of aggregating member content and interactions by city and by vertical areas of interest will allow us to deploy the new capital to dominate this market niche," said Param Parameswaran, Chairman of IMG and Sulekha.com.

Sulekha's Portfolio of Services - Interact and Transact
By offering a user-generated platform and a trusted community network, Sulekha enables Indians to interact and transact with their peers and businesses through three popular services:

-- Blogs and Social Networking - Sulekha provides the largest and most popular platform for Indians to voice their ideas, opinions and reviews in blogs. Users can also connect with other Indians creating online social networks. Just as social networking driven by expression has become a destination for U.S. consumers, Sulekha brings the same experience to India and beyond. Sulekha has crafted successful offline partnerships with such companies as Penguin, DNA and Indian Express to create important additional distribution avenues for its tens of thousands of bloggers.
-- Classifieds - Sulekha has the largest and most popular Indian classifieds marketplace for goods and services that fosters transactive relationships among its members in over 25 cities worldwide daily. With more than 250,000 ads and addressing 80% of online Indians worldwide, Sulekha provides unparalleled opportunities to connect members when they need to interact and transact.
-- Yellow Pages - Sulekha.com is the leading provider of online yellow pages in India supporting millions of business searches every month. Sulekha leverages its vast audience to help local businesses reach customers on a daily basis, and includes user-contributed reviews, ratings and recommendations to enable consumers to make the most informed purchasing decisions. Sulekha's yellow pages currently offer business listings in eight cities throughout India and US. Sulekha Yellow Pages is also integrated with WAP-enabled mobile phones for mobile downloads of listings.

"While we are only recently witnessing tremendous interest in Web 2.0 startups worldwide, Sulekha has been a thought leader in this space for some time, and continues to make rapid strides. Sulekha's strong and experienced management team is well-positioned to capitalize on the unprecedented Internet growth in India over the last year, and we believe the company has a first mover advantage in pursuing significant revenue-generating opportunities in the coming years," added Promod Haque.

About Sulekha.com
Sulekha.com is the leading online community and networking hub for Indians worldwide, uniquely integrating social media with local commerce. Sulekha.com connects Indians worldwide through a portfolio of industry-leading blogs, social networking, classifieds, events and yellow pages services in 25 cities. Sulekha.com has transformed itself from a blogging site into a popular web destination for Indians worldwide and is a bustling marketplace of thought, opinion, commerce, discussion and creative expression.

About Norwest Venture Partners
Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) is a global venture capital firm that has actively partnered with entrepreneurs to build great businesses for more than 45 years. NVP focuses on investments in information technology including: semiconductor and components, systems, software, services and consumer/Internet technologies. The firm currently manages more than $2.5 billion in venture capital out of its office in Palo Alto, California, USA.

Managing Partner Promod Haque has been ranked as a top 10 dealmaker on the annual Forbes Midas List for the past three years. In 2004, Forbes named him as the #1 venture capitalist worldwide based on performance over the last decade, and in 2006, he was presented with a Global Leadership award from NASSCOM.

NVP has funded over 400 companies since inception, including more than 20 cross border companies, and several direct investments in India. Recent NVP transactions include Airespace (acquired by Cisco Systems), Resonext Communications (acquired by RF Micro Devices), Spinnaker Networks (acquired by Network Appliance) and Winphoria Networks (acquired by Motorola). NVP has also funded such market leaders as Actel Corporation, Brocade Communications, Cerent (acquired by Cisco Systems), Documentum, Extreme Networks, Forte Software (acquired by Sun Microsystems), PeopleSoft, Persistent Systems, Tivoli Systems (acquired by IBM) and Yatra. Additional information on Norwest Venture Partners is available at www.nvp.com.

About Indigo Monsoon Group
Indigo Monsoon Group (IMG) is a private investment firm focused on early stage equity investments in Indian Internet and Mobile domains. IMG has made investments in Sulekha.com (leading online community for Indians integrating social media with local commerce), Fabmall.com (the leading pure-play ecommerce company in India), Indiaplaza.com (the most popular ecommerce destination for NRIs in US) and eShakti.com (leading online India-inspired and customized apparel retailer aimed at a global audience). Additional information on Indigo Monsoon Group is available at http://www.indigomonsoon.com

Jude Rajan, Sulekha.com, +91 9840125055 JudeRajan@sulekha.net

Sunita Sabnis, Sulekha.com, US, +1 512 363 8468 sunita@sulekha.net

Source: Sulekha.com (Business Wire India)

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