Maverick Ventures enters India; agrees to invest in IDG-backed Vserv

Vserv, the leading smart data platform for mobile marketing in India and South East Asia, announced today its signing of an investment from Maverick Capital Ventures, the venture capital fund affiliate of Maverick Capital, a 21-year-old hedge fund with over US$8 billion under management.

This partnership builds on Maverick's extensive history of successfully investing and supporting mobile businesses globally to become large-scale platforms. With this investment, Vserv has raised a total of US$18 million to date, including its first round of US$3 million from IDG Ventures India.

Co-founded in 2010 by Dippak Khurana and Ashay Padwal, Vserv has grown to a 200-person strong organisation today with offices across India and South East Asia. Vserv's flagship platform, AudiencePro, ties together data from multiple sources such as offline and online marketers, telecoms operators, mobile app developers and other third party sources. The platform then creates user personas and triggers real-time intent signals, thereby enabling unprecedented discovery, analysis and monetisation of end-users.

In India alone, the Internet user base is expected to explode from 200 million today to 500 million users by 2018, primarily driven by mobile users who are expected to contribute over 80% of this base. In this high growth environment, Vserv has strategically positioned itself with rich data profiles of over 120 million mobile Internet users in India. It has mined this data to deliver mobile marketing for over 500 clients across sectors like consumer goods, e-commerce, retail, telecoms, banking and financial services, mobile entertainment and gaming.

Dippak Khurana, Co-Founder and CEO of Vserv, said: "Maverick has a successful history of investing early in large-scale mobile platforms globally. We are delighted to be their first venture capital investment in India as they bring capital and deep technology domain expertise. We are thrilled to have them join us to build the leading smart data platform for mobile marketing across India and South East Asia."

Matthew Kinsella, Managing Director, Maverick Capital Ventures, said: "We are highly impressed with the rapid pace of Vserv's growth, its smart data platform and management team. Vserv is uniquely positioned to drive the mobile Internet ecosystem in India and South East Asia through their exceptional data assets. We look forward to helping Vserv accelerate its growth further."

Manik Arora, Founder & Managing Director, IDG Ventures India, said: "As an early investor in Vserv, IDG welcomes Maverick as a valued co-investor to further drive the differentiated big data marketing business Dippak and Ashay have built. The mobile Internet ecosystem is at an inflection point in India today and we are delighted to further support the company as it goes into high gear."