Teewe raises Rs 11 crore from Sequoia Capital, India Quotient

BENGALURU/MUMBAI: Marking the coming of age of hardware startups in India, Teewe, India's own version of Google Chromecast, has raised Rs 11 crore from marquee investors Sequoia Capital and India Quotient, according to filings with the Registrar of Companies.
Bharti SoftBank's Kavin Bharti Mittal, SoftBank's Pavan Ongole, former Alcatel-Lucent India chairman Arun Seth along with Palaash Ventures had participated in the previous round which amounted to Rs 1.5 crore.
Sequoia Capital led the current funding round with Rs 9.5 crore.
"Very few hardware startups have raised money, especially from such mainstream investors. This is a testimony to our efforts and our product," said chief executive Sai Srinivas Kiran. Its product, a dongle, can turn the TV into an internet-connected streaming media player.
Overall, venture capital investors pumped in more than $2.1 billion across 246 deals last year, including 60 seed-stage investments, according to data compiled by research firm VCCEdge.
But investments in hardware startups — a segment which has given some of world's most valuable tech companies, such as Apple and Xiaomi — have been lagging in India.
Most hardware startups, like gesture-control ring Fin and tracking-device Gecko, initially survived on crowdfunding campaigns. The few outliers include fitness-tracking device GetActive that received an angel round from former Infosys executives Mohandas Pai and Sharad Hegde.
In a subsequent round, Fin had raised a little over Rs 6 crore from Kalaari Capital.
Since its commercial launch last September, Teewe has sold over 10,000 units of its thumb-sized device. For every three Chromecast devices sold in India, one Teewe is sold, said 27-year-old Kiran. The two-year-old startup plans to sell 50,000 devices by May 2015.
Teewe is priced at Rs 2,000, while Chromecast is priced at Rs 3,000.
"We are delighted to back Teewee to build the next generation of smart hardware, made intelligent with integrated software services..," said Shailendra Singh, managing director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors, who added that the number of users it has was exciting.
Unlike Google's Chromecast, which only streams from online sources, Teewe streams both online content as well as the content that could reside in a laptop, mobile phone, tablet or desktop.
The app picks up data from a device, adjusts for parameters like resolution and audio levels suitable for TV viewing, before streaming it to the TV.
It is banking on the technology differentiation to take on giants like Google. "Competition is always good. It educates the customers," said Kiran, a former product manager at gaming company Zynga.
"If they advertise more, it's good for us." The 22-member startup will also launch a new device for music players. It will allow multiple people to parallely connect and compile playlists.
Currently, all of the content is for free and the company is in talks to make available content from one of the biggest production houses in Bollywood and a TV channel as well.
Teewe also wants to bring classrooms to the drawing room by tying up with content aggregators in the education space.
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