By Saumya Tewari

Banyan Netfaqs Pvt Ltd has received under $3 milllion funds from Seedfund, an early-stage venture capital fund. This is the second round of funding received by the company that runs online properties – afaqs.com and The Mobile Indian. 

The venture capital fund has a minority stake in the company. It has earlier invested in the company back in October 2007. Prior to that, Banyan Netfaqs received an undisclosed amount from Infinity Ventures in 2000.

Confirming the same to India Digital Review, Sreekant Khandekar, co-founder and director, Banyan Netfaqs said "We have a B2B website afaqs and B2C portal called The Mobile Indian. We are also creating a professional network of advertising and media professionals, ThePodium.in. I believe that barring non-news and finance space which is very crowded, there is an immense opportunity in the special interest areas. Most of the traditional publishing companies have stayed where they are occupied with news so the special interest area remains unexplored. With this funding we plan to launch three special interest websites one of which will be in lifestyle space. We plan to launch two of them before the end of this year and third one next year.”

Giving us more insight on online publishing business, Khandekar further added that it is not just banners that advertisers seek from online properties, “We have been around in the business for more than a decade and we have realized that to become a successful publisher online you need three legs, we create the content and technology in-house as well as we have understood what advertisers want online and it is not only banners. In case of The Mobile Indian which is the largest website in the space in terms of ad revenue that is because we do not just sell banners we talk to agencies and marketers and figure out interesting activities for them like sponsorship, leads, banners and contest etc. So, the crux is it is great to have good content and cutting technology but if you cannot sell what you create then it is not going to take you anywhere.”

Shailesh Vikram Singh, executive director, Seedfund Advisors, who is also a board member at Banyan Netfaqs, said, “This is the second round of funding for Banyan Netfaqs. With this, we intend  to launch networking website for advertising, media and marketing professionals as well as three more websites and we are looking at the non-news area. The aim of BNPL is to become largest content networks in India which is currently dominated by Google and Yahoo.” 

Founded in 1998 by Sreekant Khandekar and advertising professional Sandeep Vij, the company owns two online properties – afaqs, a portal that covers advertising and marketing fraternity, The Mobile Indian which covers technology and mobile industry. 

With offices in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, the company has employee strength of 100. Both Sreekanth and Sandeep essay the role of directors in the company.