Aarohi to raise $15 mn in Q1 2005

Aarohi Communications, a start up storage area network firm, plans to raise $15 million in the first quarter of next year to fund its expansion in India and USA.

The company, in the last three years has raised $36 million from two venture capital firms and three corporate investors.

This round of funding will see a new investor bringing in anywhere between a third to half of the $15 million. Ameesh Divatia, CEO Aarohi Communications said on Monday during the launch of Aarohi's developer partner programme for software service providers in India that existing investors will pump in the rest.

He said, "The money will go towards the $20 million planned investment next year."

The company has so far invested $30 million to develop the 'Fabric Stream' intelligent storage processor. The design centre in Bangalore will double capacity from 31 engineers now. Also, the next chip from Aarohi scheduled for launched 12 months from now will be led by the Bangalore centre.

Further, more support staff are expected to co-ordinate the developer programme. He said that the developer programme for India is an extension of the module initiated in the US about 18 months ago. The US operation in San Jose with about 40 employees had bagged ISV (Independent Software Vendors).

The programme will provide service companies the training to tap the $7 billion software storage market through services and products. The services segment of this market alone is worth $1 billion.

He added that the opportunities are huge for service providers as the $48 billion market (hardware and software) is growing at 18 per cent compared to the five per cent compounded annual growth rate of the IT industry. The industry is driven by capacity expansion and the growing importance for disaster recovery.

Aarohi targets a $100 million topline in three years from under a million dollars now.