Cambridge Technology Enterprises lines up Rs 8 crore to fund US-based startups

HYDERABAD: IT services firm Cambridge Technology Enterprises (CTE) has announced an investment of close to Rs 8 crore ($1.3 million) in US-based automated photo-sharing platform PhotoKarma, alongside Idealab, Bessemer and New York Angels.

Hyderabad-based CTE has also invested in MyCrowd, a crowd-testing platform for website and mobile applications.

The investments, made as part of the company’s Cambridge Innovations Fund, aim to create a potential market for CTE’s solutions on big data analytics and cloud services.

The fund typically participates in the seed stage with a commitment of close to $250,000.

"Our focus is on investing in 12 US-based and Indian startups by March 2017 as a means of incubating our clients as well as helping these companies with delivery so that they can focus on marketing and financing challenges. The services to the startups are provided by CTE independent of the involvement of Cambridge Innovation," said Aashish Kalra, chairman of CTE and former managing director of Trikona Capital.

So far, CTE has invested in five US-based startups and India-based Anthill Ventures, which invests in pre-Series A companies.

CTE has projected annual revenue of close to Rs 6.6 crore for 2015-16. "We are looking to hire between 50 to 100 freshers this year and train them to work on our services related to cloud and big data," Kalra said.