SL IT startup 24/7 Techies raises Rs. 80 million in funding
View(s):Sri Lankan IT startup 24/7 Techies has raised US$ 600,000 (close to Rs. 80 million) of international funding while, at the same time, also being featured on top technology blog Tech Crunch, according to a media statement by the company.
24/7 Techies, which offers off-site, remote technical support to small and medium businesses (SMBs), is run by its Chief Executive Dilendra Wimalasekere, who is best known locally for another Sri Lankan company, Eureka Technology Partners, one of the country’s first Internet service providers (ISPs).
According to the media statement, this round of seed funding for 24/7 Techies was led by prominent Silicon Valley angel investor Dave McClure’s 500 Startups business incubator, and also included notables such as Rajan Anandan, Vice President of Google India, and Shailesh Rao, Vice President for International Operations for Twitter. Further, it was noted that this funding would be earmarked particularly to “accelerate its offerings for small and medium sized businesses”.
Elaborating, the media statement also quoted Mr. Wimalasekere as saying that the funding was “going to be predominantly used to ramp up our sales and marketing activity – and also grow some of our information systems, reorganisation and grow the support team”.
With services for SMBs priced from US$ 99 (close to Rs. 13,000) per month upwards, for micro businesses which have one to three employees, the company has stated that it can “undercut rivals by as much as 50 per cent”.
At the same time, it has also reveaed that, since launching its dedicated micro business offerings in April 2012, it has grown this segment by more than 100 customers and is “seeing month-over-month growth of 20 per cent”.
Meanwhile, Mr. Wimalasekere was also quoted in 24/7 media statement as saying that he had “noticed that nearly a fifth of its customers were actually micro SMBs – and realised there was a gap in the market”. It also emerged that the company’s current area of concentration was USA, Canada, Australia and UK, with around 70 per cent of its more than 8,500 customers in the USA presently.
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