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EpowerN secures $2 m in second-round funding
Krishna Gopalan
Mumbai : EpowerN Ventures, a Chennai-based technology incubator, has raised $2 million in its second-round of funding from European venture capitalist Eur India. Disclosing this to The Financial Express, EpowerN Ventures, executive director, Manoj Agarwal said this amount would be invested in IT security solutions provider, EAlcatraz. "About eighty per cent of our investments are IT-related" said Mr Agarwal. He added that EpowerN today had a total of seven investments in the areas of IT services, Internet services and B2C related activities. The investments in the IT services segment comprise wireless applications and IT security. In the field of Internet services EpowerN's investments are in online advertising and Internet market research.In B2C, EpowerN's investments are for entertainment ticketing and eco-tourism. According to Mr Agarwal, EpowerN handles six to eight active ventures at any point of time. On the nature of his company's business, Mr Agarwal said EpowerN promoted the company to a point of stability. At that stage, he explained, a larger venture capitalist who will be able to bring in more investments can step in. Mr Agarwal said he was not looking at another round of funding for the next one year. He added that the priority for the next round would be to scout for a "strategic investor". While the first round of funding worth half a million dollars was done with internal sources, the second round has come from Eur India. According to Mr Agarwal, a large portion of EAlcatraz's business would come from Europe. eAlcatraz's line of business is protecting the information assets of organisations. The security solutions offered by eAlacatraz are ACS, ADS, VPN and PKI. These relate to access control systems, attack detection systems and connecting remote offices, besides providing solutions related to public key infrastructure. Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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