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The Second Coming
Saturday, June 1, 2002

Any time, anywhere,” is what Rajesh Reddy and Ashok Narasimhan think is the backbone of their latest venture -- July Systems.

Rajesh was the founder of the erstwhile Unimobile, formerly Gray Cell. Unimobile was in the business of providing mobile messaging to global companies, and was one of the first product companies founded in India and transplanted, as a startup, to Silicon Valley.

With Unimobile, Reddy hoped to deliver real time, two-way messages to mobile devices across multiple network protocols. Their clients included Citibank, Singapore Airlines and Hewlett-Packard (HP).

Unimobile attracted almost $18 million from blue chip venture capitalists like Draper, Walden, ComVentures, PemCap Ventures, K B Chandrashekar and B V Jagadeesh, and was finally sold to Electronics For Imaging (EFI) for a mere $2.5 million. That, however, has not detracted Rajesh and Ashok from another venture

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Neither has it bothered Reddy’s current investors, California-based WestBridge Capital Partners, Acer Technology Ventures Asia Pacific and early-stage technology venture firm Jumpstartup, who have poured in almost $5.5 million in Series A funding into July Systems.

With July Systems, the duo are attempting to tap what they call a big opportunity in seamless, wireless data access. Narasimhan and Reddy are trying to create a ‘wireless superstructure’, knitting together elements of next-generation wireless devices, services, platforms, networks, applications and the underlying technologies to deliver enterprise-class wireless data services.

July Systems will build strategic relationships with all the players in the wireless chain: right from carriers like AT&T and Vodafone, to device makers of PDAs and laptops like HP, Dell and Palm, software vendors like Siebel and SAP, and infrastructure companies like Cisco and Nokia.

Strangely July Systems, which celebrates its first year next month, is yet to announce a strategic roadmap. But perhaps that can be explained by the company’s focus on developing a product.

“The investors are excited by July Systems’ prospects because they are in a domain that is expected to grow exponentially,” says Kiran Nadkarni, managing director of Jumpstartup.

For Acer Technology Ventures, it is the first investment in a U.S.-based, Indian-founded company. It sees significant role for July in Acer’s forthcoming rollout of wireless data initiatives in the Greater China region.


The company is hoping for revenue, which will come from licensing products and per-user fees from customers, including wireless carriers. Wireless spending may not be huge over the next six months, but the long-term prospects remain enormous. Will the duo snare this market?

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