Rajan Anandan, Shailesh Rao, Pramod Bhasin, 500 Startups invest $600K in Sri Lanka's 24/7 Techies

24/7 Techies, a Sri Lankan computer support startup that provides technical support on the cloud, has received $600,000 (Rs 3.26 crore) in seed funding from Dave McClure's accelerator and seed investment fund 500 Startups while Rajan Anandan (MD at Google India), Shailesh Rao (VP, international revenue, at Twitter) and Pramod Bhasin (former president & CEO at Genpact) have also participated in the round.

"The funding will be used for ramping up sales and marketing to grow the SMB business, building our information systems and growing our support teams," said Dilendra Wimalasekere, founder and CEO, 24/7 Techies.

The startup was incubated at Eureka Technology Partners and it spun out as an independent entity early this year. It can be reached online or over the phone, and claims to resolve all technical issues one may face while using a PC. The company has clients across seven countries including the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong, among others, and currently employs a 65-strong team. It claims to have over 8000 customers out of which approximately 75 per cent are from the US. If you visit the company's site now, you will find 500 Startups in its list of investors.

Earlier this year, nine Sri Lankan tech startups had been shortlisted to receive a total of Rs 10 crore from Indian Angel Network and Blue Ocean Ventures (founded by Anandan and Prajeeth Balasubramaniam) in a joint initiative called Venture Engine. The investors selected the 9 startups from 70 nominations and 24/7 Techies was the winner of the contest. Wimalasekere mentions that the company has already received the funds.

500 Startups has recently announced its 5th batch of companies for the accelerator programme comprising 33 companies, which also includes four Indian startups. These are Delhi-based UberLabs, Mumbai-based Urbanpotion Technologies Pvt Ltd, Mumbai-headquartered TradeBriefs and SaaS platform WalletKit. The funding in the four Indian startups was announced in October by Pankaj Jain, a venture partner (India), who was hired by 500 Startups last month to lead its India investments.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)