INDUS OS RAISES SERIES A2 FINANCING WITH VENTUREAST & JSW VENTURES AS NEW INVESTORS

Funds to be invested to hire talent, product development and investment in language technology to cover all Indian languages 

Indus OS – India’s #2 OS now has over 7 million users

by Shrutee K/DNS

Mumbai, India: Indus OS, India’s #2 operating system, attracted new investors VenturEast  and JSW Ventures, in its Series A2 financing round. Omidyar Network, an investor in Series A round, continued its participation. The undisclosed funding amount will be used to hire talent, develop product and further invest in language technology to cover all Indian languages. 

Indus OS has built a unique value proposition in the current competitive smartphone market based on its localized, simplified and innovative operating system for India. Launched in 2015, Indus OS climbed upto the #2 position in India within a year, ahead of global giants such as Apple’s iOS & Microsoft’s Windows. Currently, it commands a user base of 7 million, across its smartphone brand partners including Micromax, Intex, Karbonn, Celkon and Swipe.

Dr. Srikanth Sundararajan, Partner at VenturEast said on the investment, “The uniqueness of Indus OS i.e. its India focused operating system to help more Indians explore the true potential of technology fits perfectly with our fund’s primary emphasis on the rural & semi-urban markets, and the needs of the SME’s. Our commitment to this team in terms of investment, as well as our support otherwise, dates back to more than two years ago. The team behind Indus OS is well-experienced and equipped to attain their vision of connecting the next 1 billion smartphone users most of them being rural.”

Gaurav Sachdeva, Managing Partner at JSW Ventures said on the investment, "Indus OS’ ecosystem in regional languages will help Indian smartphone users come on the internet, discover services and content with ease. We are glad to back an OS platform innovation that has immense growth potential in the current market conditions tied to the ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’ initiatives of the Government of India. We will extend our support to the company to sustain and accelerate the growth momentum they have shown in the past few years."

Rakesh Deshmukh, ,Co-Founder & CEO, Indus OS, said, “The faith shown by the prestigious funds such as JSW Ventures, VenturEast, and continuous support of Omidyar Network, will help us achieve our vision of empowering the next 1 billion Indian users with a smartphone ecosystem of their choice. Funds from Series A2 will be invested to hire top industry talent and further product development and innovation. We are already in talks with international and Chinese smartphone brands for the launch of our next version - Indus OS 3.0, which we believe will revolutionize the Indian smartphone industry. ” 

Indus OS 3.0 will be a major milestone upgrade from India’s #2 operating system. For the past year, Indus OS’ team has been working closely with leading hardware and developer partners in the Indian smartphone ecosystem to build the Indus OS 3.0 platform, to be released in the next quarter. This platform will alleviate some of the major pain points of the Indian smartphone user.  

Indus OS also announced that Sunil Lalvani, ex-Head of Qualcomm and BlackBerry in India has recently joined the company as an advisor. The company will soon be opening an office in China to further its efforts to partner with international smartphone brands. 

Last year, Indus OS 2.0 introduced the revolutionary ‘Indus Reader’ (Text-to-Speech) in 8 languages, built in partnership with the Government of India’s Ministry of Electronics and Technology (MeitY). It recently released the Recharge 2.0 feature, first-ever dialler integrated balance tracking & analytics feature with one touch recharge. The company is consistently evolving to meet the technological needs of the Indian consumer and the ‘Digital India’ mandate of the Govt. of India. Indus OS today offers a complete ecosystem rich in patented features and innovations that empower the emerging market users with smartphone technology.