GVFL to invest in RapidRadio Solutions from NirmaLabs

Ahmedabad, Feb 21 (UNI) GVFL, India's pioneer Venture Capital Company today announced its decision to invest an initial Rs 8 million in RapidRadio Solutions Pvt Ltd, a technology start-up spun off from the NirmaLabs incubator program.

RapidRadio marks GVFL's first investment in a start-up from an academic incubator programme. RapidRadio Solutions began its operations in 2005 in the area of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. GVFL will make the seed stage investment from its Rs 270 million Gujarat IT Fund.

''The RapidRadio investment is a new milestone in our endeavor to provide critical seed stage and early stage funding to innovative start-ups that are poised to take knowledge based test-marketed ideas into commercial production. We are now stepping forward into campus incubation programmes to identify and nurture promising ideas and entrepreneurs,'' said Mr Vishnu Varshney, CEO of GVFL Ltd in a release here today.

''Being an enabling technology and not just a product, the opportunity for RFID application is incredibly diverse and large.

Various sectors like manufacturing, retail, healthcare, vehicle tracking, inventory management with a compelling need of asset tracking are aggressively working towards the deployment of RFID,'' Mr Varshney said.

''RFID is a next generation tool of AIDC technology that facilitates business processes automation. RapidRadio with its expertise in RFID technology is focusing on designing, developing, innovating and deploying RFID hardware solutions. The funding will support our rapid growth plans. We will deploy the funds to expand our product range to include Ultra-High Frequency (UHF 900 MHz) products and also developing Active RFID based products,'' says Mr Dhaval Kotecha, CEO of RapidRadio.

''GVFL is the ideal venture capital firm to help us as we step out of the incubation phase. It has funded and successfully guided many start-ups and we are sure to benefit from its expertise,'' he said.

Rapid Radio is the 6th investment from the Rs 270 million Gujarat IT Fund. GVFL has previously invested in Net4Nuts, Ecube, Icenet, Anupam Globalsoft and Convergelabs from the fund.

UNI