e4e Inc, a $125 million technology holding company designed to exploit the globalising effect of Internet computing, had its US launch today in Santa Clara, California.
Led by Exodus co-founder KB Chandrasekar and backed by Silicon Valley venture capital firms as well as private individuals, e4e has an eye to leverage both the Internet and India’s skilled manpower resources. It will primarily invest in companies in India that remotely deliver Internet infrastructure services to customers in the US. The target customers are communications services companies and enterprises. Companies that e4e invests in will offer services that are complementary to each other, and together they will offer end-to-end solutions to their customers.
“Customers are not going to run their own applications, but want to flick a switch and get services as they today get electricity. We want e4e to be the platform to make that happen,” KB Chandrasekhar, co-founder and chairman of e4e, told ASP News during the Indian launch of e4e earlier this month.
Chandrasekhar is in a position to know, as most of the businesses he founded — including Santa Clara-based Exodus Communications Inc and Sunnyvale, California-based ASP aggregator Jamcracker Inc — are built around the services model. See related ASPnews profile, Exodus is Just the Beginning For Chandra.
Indeed, Chandrasekhar, who likes to build close synergy among the companies he invests in, expects that Jamcracker may serve as the distribution conduit for Internet infrastructure services offered by e4e’s investment vehicles.
e4e has been set up with a capitalization of $125 million, planned to rise to about $300 million over the next three years. During that time, the company expects to invest in about 12 ventures, according to Somshankar Das, president and CEO of e4e Inc. The fund is backed by venture capital companies such as California-based Walden International and Global Internet Ventures in Bethesda MD.
e4e will provide capital from a company’s inception through its initial public offering (IPO) and beyond, hence reducing the time spent by entrepreneurs in raising additional capital resources to fund expansion. It will also offer its portfolio companies management counsel, access to global technical and managerial expertise, and support for basic business services such as human resources, business development, legal, accounting and marketing communications.
In the first phase, e4e will invest in companies that offer Internet infrastructure services in the areas of network management services, managed information technology services, wireless data services, information technology consulting and implementation services, and customer relationship management.
Besides investing in infrastructure services companies themselves, e4e is also investing in companies that offer technology relevant to the infrastructure services business, or who offer market access. Investments that it has already announced include:
ing and operations outsourcing to service providers
“We are not looking at this model by accident,” said Chandrasekhar. “When you look at it, Exodus was the first step in the utility computing model. Following on that at the application level was Jamcracker. To support Jamcracker with technology and people, Aztec was formed to be the core engine to drive a lot of the technology developments to make it happen. Then there are companies like Unimobile who bring in the technology for the remote delivery of services. So the food chain begins to happen.”
e4e’s wholly owned subsidiary in Bangalore, called e4e Labs Pvt Ltd, will focus on developing technologies with a long-term market perspective. “e4e Labs will be a key component to work on the technologies that tomorrow could be converted into a new variety of remotely delivered services,” Chandrasekhar added.
