Social Networking Site Minglebox Receives $7 Million In Funding Fron Sequoia Capital
You’re reading it here first: Indian social networking site Minglebox has received $7 million in funding from Sequoia Capital India. Minglebox was started by three IIT Delhi alumni – Kavita Iyer, Sanjay Aggarwal and Sushma Abburi, who have previously worked in companies like Yahoo, i2, ICICI, Wipro, HLL and Infosys. R.Ramaraj, ex-CEO and co-founder of Sify has joined the board of Minglebox.
The company has apparently adopted a different approach to populating its social network – they’ve focused on creating communities for colleges and trying to emulate a college hangout online, which is one of the things people use Orkut (yeah, we keep going back to Orkut, don’t we?) for. Minglebox has a bunch of other usual stuff: blogs, photos and videos. Most videos are from YouTube, and there is (again) some copyrighted Bollywood content embedded from YouTube…I wonder who’s liable in this case – the user who uploads; YouTube, which publishes and facilitates sharing; or Minglebox, where the video is embedded…that’s a problem that many social networks with video content are facing today.
ContentSutra has learned that Minglebox has content tie-ups with music labels including HMV, for the music content they stream via their jukebox. The funding will be used for product development, technology innovation and expansion of market reach.
Update: I asked Kavita Iyer, CEO of Minglebox about how they plan to compete in this rather overcrowded social networking space in India. She says that they’re trying to emulate the college Intranet, to connect students and ex-students – stickiness will come from creating close knit communities. Minglebox next wants to create communities for workspaces. But what about the monetization? Iyer says it will come from advertising and branded communities, but that’s for later. Right now, they’re more focused on phase 1, which is about about creating a community. Tie-ups for college festivals is on the anvil. About the mobile space, Iyer says that they will launch gprs based products at some point in time, but are not too keen on SMS products, even though they have those ready.
What happened to Sanjay Mittal ? I think he was in the management team at Minglebox but no longer there at Minglebox. Has he left ?
Already feels a bubble burst,
HELOOOO- is this a real deal or under the table deal.Is krishnan.iyer of sequoia a relative of kavita iyer-just wondering WHY minglebox-
its literally a zero value site.
now beginning to wonder the integrity of INSIDERS
Their idea of creating a community around College is not unique . FACEBOOK did it first most of the colleges like IIT and IIM have there pages on FACEBOOK
i think sponsoring the college fest is a good idea . I remember Bazze did it at IITK and a lot of folks at IIT became a BIGTIme Bazzy user later .
they have right Tech competency though i like their UI . they are learning form every other website . each feature reminds me of one website or other . but over all they have done a good job with Core engine .
Now the next challenge is to get user base . $7 Million is enough to ensure that i guess .
Next few month will be interesting . Good Luck to Kavita and Her Team
Yea.. This is weird. We have one guy who says Social Networking is dead and the other is pumping 7M into it. Sometimes, I feel Angel investors do more research than VC firms !
Having said that, I think Sequoia Capital is betting on the whole Web1.0/2.0 scene in India. They pumped 7M into Guruji and now this. I think they are going to evenly distribute their portfolio, hoping that one of them will click. Or they will combine all these companies and become one big media portal?
to "lets open our eyes": actually Kavita is Sandeep Singhal's (Sequoia India MD) wife, but having said that its not an underhand deal. there is no harm in investing in well run family businesses :-)
I am more concerned about how Sequoia manages the conflict with fropper.com as People Interactive, the parent company of Fropper.com has also raised $8M from Sequoia.
Basically Sequoia is keeping money in two of the most trafficked community sites in India after Orkut, so if either one wins they win.
Smart but also shows they have no idea whats going to work in India. So much for operational expertise from VCs
I like the UI – lots of little variations, but neat experience and getting better by the day. good luck minglebox.
The college stuff on minglebox is interesting…lets watch
Did Minglebox approach other VCs apart from Sequoia? Any idea?
fropper ,now mingle box are funded.any other socialnets in India who have recieved funding.whats the funding status for indyarocks-any idea