Persistent Systems picks up $18 M Series A Date:   Wednesday , December 28, 2005 Dr. Anand Deshpande’s Persistent Systems, a software product development company, has picked up $18.8 million in Series A. Norwest Venture Partners & Gabriel Venture Partners led the funding to assist the company to further augment its presence in the U.S. and aggressively accelerate growth in the offshore product development space in India that will become an $8 billion market by 2008. The Pune, India based Persistent with offices in Santa Clara, CA, Waltham, MA, Bellevue, WA, Scotland, U.K. and Tokyo, Japan employs over 2300 employees who work among the Fortune 500 companies, mid-level and startups across the globe. “They see us complementing companies who build products, and we partner their ecosystem. They look at stable companies and want desired returns, which they and we believe, we can fulfill, as Persistent is well poised for growth and that’s what makes us attractive to the VCs,” says Deshpande on VC interest in his company. Deshpande adds that having VCs on board will help the company in the long term. “Well I think they can bring us significant and strategic value. They are well based in their eco-systems and they work with companies in this kind of a space, they improve the profile of the company. It allows us to have some money and right kind of partnerships. We can plan growth for the future.” For the last three years, the company has been growing at 70 percent CAGR. With revenues of $33 million this year, Deshpande says the company will retain the growth momentum for the next few years. Persistent has been ranked as the 11th fastest growing Indian company in the Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific 2004 report of Deloitte and has been classified as an “Inventor” by Forrester Research.