Ideaspring makes its second bet on enterprise networking startup Lavelle Networks

Bangalore-based early stage venture fund Ideaspring Capital has invested $600,000 (Rs 4 crore) in enterprise networking startup Lavelle Networks Pvt Ltd, according to a report by a financial daily.

The firm will use the funds to expand its operations and for marketing, Shyamal Kumar, co-founder told The Economic Times. On Thursday, Lavelle Networks was one of the 14 firms selected by Microsoft Ventures for its 2017 summer accelerator programme.

This is Ideaspring Capital's second investment. Last week, the fund invested $500,000 (Rs 3.5 crore) in Chennai-based Karomi, which offers software for packaging artwork management.

Founded in 2015 by Kumar and Karthik Madhava, Lavelle Networks offers an SDN (software defined networking) platform for WAN (wide area network) management. A wide area network is a telecommunications or computer network that extends over a large geographical distance.

The company offers SDN gateways and user interface to deploy, manage and monitor hybrid WAN networks. Their product offers features such as network accelaration, uniform network security, branches, data centres, and cloud networks.

"Lavelle Networks is working on an innovative product based on SDN that makes it very easy for organisations to deploy their WANs," Naganand Dorasami, managing director and founder of Ideaspring Capital told ET.

Angel investors Doraswamy and Prashant Deshpande joined hands with Patni Computers' scions Arihant and Amit Patni, among others, to launch Ideaspring in April 2016. It invests in tech startups operating in the space of machine-learning and deep learning, computer vision and image processing, big data analytics, Internet of Things, augmented and virtual reality, health-tech and fin-tech.

Ideaspring has four general partners, or GPs in industry parlance, including Infosys veterans V Balakrishnan (founder and chairman, Exfinity Venture Partners) and TV Mohandas Pai (chairman, Manipal Global Education Services and Aarin Capital), Rajiv C Mody (owner of Sasken Communication Technologies) and Amit Patni.

While Doraswamy is managing director and chief executive at Ideaspring , Arihant Patni and Deshpande are managing directors. Suryaprakash Konanuru is chief technology officer at the firm.

Ideaspring Capital, with a targeted corpus of Rs 125 crore, was looking to achieve its first closure of Rs 90 crore within a month of its launch. The fund plans to invest up to $450,000 (around Rs 3 crore) in early-stage tech startups, besides participating in pre-Series A and Series A rounds where it will pump in up to $750,000 (around Rs 5 crore) as a co-investor. The firm is targeting four to six early-stage deals each year for the next three years.