AZTEC to raise funds through VC route.
aztec.soft.net
Aztec plans to raise $8 m
K C Krishnadas (fe)
BANGALORE 21 OCTOBER
THE Bangalore-based software start-up, Aztec, said on Thursday that it is getting ready for ramping up its scale of operations in an exponential manner and will seek to raise between $8-$10 million in venture capital to fund this phase of growth.
The three-and-a-half-year old company, which also has a subsidiary organisation in Santa Clara, US, believes it now has the products and technologies and customer references to show and has targeted what it calls ?a monster market? to catapult itself into.
Aztec has delineated the enabling of application service providers in the business-to-business electronic commerce space as its targeted area of growth.
Beefing up sales and marketing, increasing the breadth of senior management and scaling up infrastructure are among the things the new round of funding will help achieve, said S Partha Sarathy, chief executive officer, Aztec Software and Technology Services (P) Ltd.
So far, investments have been by founders, friends, family and associates and an angel investor ? Mr K B Chandrasekhar (co-founder of Exodus Communications). Mr Partha Sarathy did not disclose the amount of investment made so far. The infusion of venture capital could happen during this fiscal and will be the first round of such funding, he said.
While Aztec is not currently searching for a suitable venture capital company, it will embark upon this process in a few months.
It is likely that Aztec will go in for such infusion from a US- based venture capital company (or companies), given the amount of infusion needed and the strategic advantages a US-based company can give it, Mr Partha Sarathy said.
"We need to scale up the business significantly in a short time. We need a lot more money. So the venture capitalists we will turn to need to be ones with deep pockets and a focus on the areas we work in," he said.
Aztec does not have any pre-conceived notion of how much equity it will part with to venture capitalists.
"I'm not a control freak, so having equity control is not the most important thing. The most important thing now is to scale up the business to a completely different, bigger level. We are looking at a vastly different level of operations and that?s what we need the additional funds for. In the Internet business, speed of execution is what is vital," he said.
An initial public offering (IPO) is also on the agenda, though not immediately. "We will go in for an IPO when we reach the right level of valuation," he said. |
