Intel Capital, Intel Corporation’s global investment arm has announced a bulk investment of $77 million in 18 new companies of which three are based in India — Shufflr.tv, BuzzInTown and Verismo Networks.

Shufflr.tv is an Adobe Air based application developed by the cloud-based video discovery platform Althea Systems, headquartered in Bangalore. It provides a clean interface for discovering new content, and has content deals inked with NDTV, Reuters, CNBC-TV18, BigFlix in India, BBC and MSNBC in the UK, and also with Brightcove which aggregates a large number of content providers.

Intel has further made undisclosed investments in Wortal which owns and operates the India based events listing site BuzzInTown which lists events taking place across 18 cities in India, including books and exhibitions, concerts, movies, theatre, sports, and so on and is now monetizing to push news letters on a weekly or daily basis.

The third Indian firm, Verismo Networks, enables original equipment makers (OEMs) and multiple system operators (MSOs) to offer Internet content browsing on TV. In Bangalore, Verismo provides content service for IPTV service provider Atria Convergence Technologies, which is among the first MSOs in the country to launch IPTV services.

“Innovation continues to thrive all over the world. Despite the economic environment, these 18 investments help advance next generation computing technologies aligning with Intel’s vision that more and more devices will compute and connect to the Internet, called the ‘compute continuum.’ The innovative technology developed by these companies supports the compute continuum from advancements in PCs and server trends, such as cloud computing, to building out the ecosystem around smart TVs and smartphones.” says Arvind Sodhani, President of Intel Capital and EVP of Intel.