Canaan Partners Invests In Naaptol To Build On Its Home Shopping Platform

Naaptol is the fastest growing company in the home shopping space and offers services over multiple touch points including print, TV and internet. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) August 20, 2010 - Naaptol, a leading home shopping platform in India, today announced the closing of Series A round of Venture Capital funding from Canaan Partners, a multibillion-dollar, global, venture capital firm.

Naaptol is the fastest growing company in the home shopping space and offers services over multiple touch points including print, TV and internet. Currently, Naaptol has a pan India reach of over 200M households and facilitates fulfillment and delivery through its nationwide logistics tie ups. Naaptol has developed robust technology to facilitate all aspects of home shopping including interfacing with multiple suppliers, multiple logistics partners, multiple media partners and being able to provide effective customer support.

The home shopping space in India is poised to grow rapidly driven by several factors including a growing middle class that is increasingly demanding more lifestyle products, lack of significant choice in retail beyond the top cities, and the convenience of shopping from home. With TV penetration as high as 125 million households and internet users approaching close to 100 Million, home shopping is expected to take significant share of the retail shopping market.

Mr. Manu Agarwal, CEO Naaptol said, "Naaptol is a platform that brings together buyers, sellers as well as media companies to facilitate shopping from home. We are delighted to work with a leading Venture Fund like Canaan Partners and the capital raised will be applied directly to enhancing our capabilities and expanding into multiple media formats. We are looking to partner with leading media houses in the country to grow the home shopping category."
Commenting on the investment, Alok Mittal, Managing Director- Canaan Partners India said, "Building a leading home shopping platform requires capital in the range of Rs 150 Crores and Canaan Partners will contribute a significant piece of this. This is our first investment in the home shopping space in India, and we are looking forward to the difference Naaptol is set to make."

About Canaan Partners
Canaan Partners invests in visionary entrepreneurs and provides them the networks, insights and operational guidance required to build high-performance technology and healthcare companies. Founded in 1987, the firm has raised eight funds and completed more than 78 acquisitions and 53 IPOs. With $3 billion under management and a worldwide footprint, the firm is committed to catalyzing the growth of innovative digital media, communications & mobility, enterprise and clean tech companies. Among its successes are Associated Content, the people's media company; VOIP equipment supplier Acme Packet; CommerceOne, the company that pioneered B2B ecommerce; DoubleClick, the leading online advertising solution; Match.com, the most popular online dating site in the world; and SuccessFactors, the global leader in on-demand performance and talent management solutions. Other Canaan investments include 3Crowd, Active Networks, Blip.tv, Blurb, Consim, iYogi, KABAM, Lending Club, ON24, OpenSky, Prime Sense, SOASTA, Tremor Media, TweetPhoto and Zoosk. Canaan has a presence in California, Connecticut, India and Israel. For more information visit www.canaan.com.

About Naaptol
Naaptol is a platform that brings together buyers, sellers (vendors) as well as media companies who may wish to effectively utilize their reach to facilitate virtual commerce transactions. In addition, Naaptol also provides an extensive logistics and delivery network, customer support for successful fulfillment of transactions. Launched in January 2008, Naaptol has grown to become one of India's leading shopping platforms, the one-stop destination for all shoppers, merchants and market enthusiasts. For more information visit www.naaptol.com

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