NextSet Software to invest $20 mn in India

Fakir Chand in Bangalore

NextSet Software Inc, the US-based premier provider of open and high-performance 'business exchange automation' software solutions for Global 1,000 companies, is investing $20 million in India to set up four e-business product development centres in the country.

The year-old privately-held company, headquartered at Palo Alto in California, has began its Indian operations from this month from its first two PDCs at Madras and Bangalore, which it has acquired following the recent merger of the Silicon Valley-based Glue Beans, a software solutions company promoted by two Indian technocrats based in the US.

The other two PDCs are coming up in Hyderabad and Pune in the next two quarters.

NSI Founder and CEO Simon Yencken said that NextSet was an `Indian MNC' headquartered in the Silicon Valley due to the acquisition of Glue Beans, and the presence of its core development team in India. The acquisition amount was not disclosed.

"NextSet will provide a platform to global firms, leading financial institutions, application service providers, and e-markets for migrating to the Internet-based B2B exchanges that not only automate and integrate their business processes, but also extend and optimise all exchange activities among enterprises, trading partners and marketplaces."

Funded by Integral Capital Partners, a US-based venture capital fund, and global angel investors to the tune of $16 million, NextSet is going for the second round of funding next month to raise about $20 million, required for its operations-cum-expansion plans in India, and worldwide.

"Fund managers are presently evaluating the company's existing strengths and its huge business potential for pricing its shares with premium as two Taiwan-based angel investors have shown keen interest to have a substantial stake in NextSet," Yencken stated here. Among the leading investors in the company are Goldman Sachs; Warburg Dillon Read; Borland, Novell, Oracle, Global Crossing, and PeopleSoft.

According to Glue Beans promoter and Co-founder of NextSet Vijay Odddiraju, BXA solutions are aimed at connecting the major brick-and-mortar companies to their partners, customers, and suppliers through the Internet. "NextSet products are the only platform that addresses the demands of automating, integrating, extending, and optimising e-business activity," Oddiraju claimed.

NextSet software products include the patent-pending Evolution platform,

BusinessExchange solutions, and ExchangeWare suite of certified 'snap in' exchange applications and components from leading third-party vendors.

"The products enable the world's leading businesses to rapidly build and deploy open, configurable, and highly scalable distributed exchange applications for high volume and complex transactions among trading partners across the global networks," another co-founder and chief technology officer Krishna Sundaram affirmed.

Being privately held, no financial or revenue figures were forthcoming from the key players in the company except that it has orders from 50 reputed customers, and is upbeat about making its first $100 million soon.

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