Suvidhaa To Expand Footprint With Reliance Technology, NVP Funds

Suvidhaa Infoserve (SIPL), a player in the services commerce (s-commerce) space in India, has received funding from two global venture capital firms, Reliance Technology Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners India (NVP India). Reliance Technology Ventures directed the investment from one of its group entities.

Suvidhaa will use the new capital to aggressively expand its portfolio of service offerings into vertical markets throughout India and enhance business development and marketing efforts.

Suvidhaa brings services to the doorstep of the consumer. Consumers can now walk into their neighbourhood convenience / kirana stores and purchase all kinds of every day ‘services’ such as railway ticketing, mobile recharge, air ticketing, insurance payment, bill payment, bus ticketing, loan origination, movie ticketing and hundreds of other services which are in the pipeline. This ’s-commerce’ facility is based on Suvidhaa’s proprietary technology platform, which seamlessly integrates these kirana stores to various services providers’ systems.

Suvidhaa’s current network covers about 4,000 local kirana stores across 15 states in India. With minimal computer knowledge required, kirana store owners have found it easy to sign up for and use the Suvidhaa platform. Further, kirana store owners are benefiting from increasing consumer footfalls and a source of additional income.

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Suvidhaa has developed relationships with various Indian corporates to deliver these services to consumers across India. Consumers can obtain services provided by leading companies including IRCTC for railway ticketing, all major airline companies such as Jet Airways, Kingfisher, Air India, SpiceJet, GoAir and IndiGo, telecom services such as Vodafone, Airtel, BSNL, Reliance, Idea, Tata and MTNL, more than 350 bus operators covering 5000+ routes, multiplexes such as AdLabs and Fun Cinema, financial services and insurance players such as LIC, ICICI Prudential, Reliance MF, UTI MF, Reliance Money, Kotak MF, LIC MF, SBI MF. Suvidhaa also supports bill payments for utility companies in areas such as electricity, gas, telephones, mobiles, etc. Other services include education, filing of tax returns, e-pooja services, credit card services etc.

“Reliance believes that Suvidhaa, through its electronic distribution platform, provides a one-stop convenience of services to the end consumer. It is empowering traditional outlets with technology. We will continue to invest in such technology-driven and differentiated business models that strive to deliver maximum benefit to end consumers,” notes Harshal Shah, CEO, Reliance Technology Ventures.

“We believe that the s-commerce space represents a significant opportunity and are impressed with Suvidhaa’s vision to address this space. Suvidhaa’s business model targets the services sector and addresses the consumer’s needs related to accessibility, convenience and value in the consumption of every day services,” says Niren Shah, managing director, NVP India.

Paresh Rajde, founder MD and CEO, Suvidhaa Infoserve, says, “We look forward to working with Reliance Technology Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners to aggressively expand our pan-India footprint and empower more retailers and service providers with our scalable services platform.”

Suvidhaa’s ’s-commerce’ platform enables real-time transactions across multiple service providers. The platform has been tested for up to one million transactions per day.