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Printo Document Services Pvt Ltd (Printo), India’s first organized retail venture which has drawn out an ambitious pan India roll out plan for its print & document services chain, with an investment of over Rs 1000 million, today announced that Sequoia Capital Partners, one of the world’s premier venture capital firms, has made a strategic investment to a tune of Rs 250 million in Printo.
The Investment by Sequoia Capital would be a big boost for Printo as it validates the need for a professional provider of print solutions and reiterates the potential of the Indian print & document services industry, currently estimated to be around Rs 170,000 million. The investment by the venture capital major, marks coming of age for the Indian print & document services sector which hitherto was predominantly run as mom & pop stores in the unorganized segment.
In his comments Naresh Malhotra of Sequoia Capital, said, “As ‘Entrepreneurs behind Entrepreneurs’ we want to be contributors to companies that have chance to become very significant and also niche in its space. Printo has embarked on a mission which was the preserve of unorganized players and not many had ventured at least in Indian sub-continent. We are willing to support them in their endeavor of revolutionizing the Indian print & document services and change the market contours radically.”
According to Manish Sharma, Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer, Printo, “Our innovative tech-enabled business model and focus on customer service has found a strong buy-in from corporate as well as the retail consumer. The challenge now is to achieve scale & efficiency, without diluting quality of service. Sequoia’s investment would help us ramp up fast and spread our reach nationwide. We are delighted to partner with a fund that has the right blend of financial and intellectual capital to help Printo’s team deliver on our vision to change the way India prints.”
Printo, India’s first branded retail chain for print & document services, leverages digital & internet technologies to deliver print products of international standards. Besides regular print services, the company has a novel concept wherein customers could pick and choose from its template bank and customize it to their taste. Such product-based solutions straddle marketing collateral, business cards, brochures, posters, invitations, dairies, timetables, calendars, personalised greeting cards, etc. The company which has already opened six stores in Bangalore, plans to open 250 retail outlets over the next three years, across the country.
About Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital provides startup venture capital for very smart people who want to turn ideas into companies. As the “Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs”, Sequoia Capital's Partners have worked with innovators such as Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Bob Swanson of Linear Technology, Sandy Lerner & Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Dan Warmenhoven of Network Appliance, Jerry Yang & David Filo of Yahoo!, Jen-Hsun Huang of nVIDIA, Michael Marks of Flextronics, Larry Page & Sergey Brin of Google, Chad Hurley & Steve Chen of YouTube and Steve Goldman & Sujal Patel of Isilon Networks.
About Printo
Founded in 2006, Printo Document Services Pvt. Ltd. is an innovative venture that seeks to capitalize on the opportunity presented by the unorganized Rs.170,000 million market for print and document services in India. Promoted by Manish Sharma and Lalana Zaveri, who between them have 23 years of expertise in digital printing, manufacturing and IT services, Printo is experiencing exponential growth in all its areas of operations. The start-up has the backing of Seedfund (an early stage venture fund) and individuals like Pravin Gandhi (co-founder, Hinditron and SeedFund), Sridar Iyengar (Director, ICICI, Infosys and Rediff.com) and Raju Venkatraman (President & COO, ICICI OneSource) as advisors and investors.
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