Investing time for VCs in Indian Mobile Retailers and Service Providers
MobileNXT, mobile retailer which started operations in April this year with initial funding of $5 Million is now planning to raise another $10 Million in Venture Capital funding.
Mobile NXT CEO, Vijay Menon said that,
At present, the firm’s exclusive outlets are located in Gurgaon, Mangalore, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Hubli and Bangalore. We have ventured into three business concepts – standalone stores, store in stores and virtual stores. MobileNXT will have 31 stores across the country by March 2007 and 170 stores over the next 3 years.
With falling margins and ARPU, it won’t be an easy ride for Romy Juneja (MobileNXT founder) when he has competitors like Mobile Magic (gobroadband Covered them last week), which has organically grown and its promoters having richer experience in running mobile retailing than Romy. What India needs is an electronic retailer the size of Best-Buy 
In another development, Providence Equity Partners may invest Rs3000 crores in Idea cellular to get 33% stake from Birlas. This deal is likely to happen at the same valuation at which Birlas bought Tata’s stake in Idea. Group Company Aditya Birla Novuo, holds controlling stake in the venture through which Kumar Birla chairs the Idea board. Is it a good idea ? 
India Telecom, Idea, India Mobile
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[...] With such a huge potential for the mobile market, several players are entering the organized mobile retailing sector. Mobile NXT was the first one to enter directly into the business without any retailing background. While Mobile Magic was a state wide distributor and opted to go for its own branding. UniverCell Telecom was a distributor too and opted to go for online mobile retailing. ConvergeM and MBazaar are owned by India’s famous retailer, Pantloon and are expected to roll out 120 stores by 2007 and are also planning for concept mobile stores. Others in line to get a slice of Mobile retail market are are Essar Telecom, ITC Limited’s eChoupal for rural mobile marketing and DCM Shriram through their Hariyali Kissan Bazaar once again targetting the rural Indian consumer. [...]