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The Kalpathi family owns 100 per cent of Janokka Technologies and has provided about Rs 2 crore of seed funding.

Mr Kalpathi Suresh

Chennai , March 28

JANOKKA Technologies Ltd, a venture assisted by the Kalpathi family, is in talks with a handful of venture capital firms for first round funding to raise up to $2 million (about Rs 9 crore).

Some of them had finished due diligence and were doing valuation. "Some are close to giving us a term sheet," Mr Kalpathi Suresh, lead investor of the Kalpathi family, which promoted SSI Ltd, said.

The funding would see Janokka through for the next two years and would be used to develop products for Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology also. It has now developed a product for the 3G (Third Generation) GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) telecom market.

The first product — a switching software than can be used in 3G mobile GSM networks — has been sold to a European telecom hardware company, whose name Mr Suresh did not want to disclose. With this order, Janokka hopes to market the product aggressively.

He said some of the funds raised from venture capital firms would be used to migrate the product for CDMA technology and tap the North American market and to increase the company's field officers in Europe. The company hoped to select a few of the services for which specifications had been frozen for a 3G network and produce them.

Janokka is currently looking at an enterprise value of between $10 and $20 million.

Janokka was established in 2003 to develop signalling and switching solutions for enabling IP (Internet Protocol) Multimedia Subsystem-based communication in 3G mobile networks. It acquired certain technology products and related intellectual property rights to give the company the base to help it grow.

Mr Suresh said the Kalpathi family owned 100 per cent of Janokka Technologies and had provided about Rs 2 crore of seed funding.

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