19 January, 2016, Mumbai: Indus has managed to gain the trust of the investors. The fully indigenous mobile operating system, Indus has raised about US $5 Mn funding in its series A funding round. The funding round was headed by Omidyar Network and followed by many other investors. The officials of the company stated that the raised amount will be used in enhancing its technology, expansion of the company and hiring new talent.
Incepted in 2013, Mumbai based Indus OS was jointly founded by Akash Dongre, Rakesh Deshmukh and Sudhir Bangarambandi. Earlier known as Firstouch, the company provides an OS for Android which is designed for non-English speaking smartphone users. Basically, it helps the users to make the best use of smartphone with the help of regional language. It currently translates Android into 12 regional languages such as Gujrati, Marathi, Bengali etc.
Speaking on the investment, Badri Pillapakkam, Director, Omidyar Networks opined, “We have a strong bias towards technology innovations that solve large-scale problems through local solutions, with the potential to have transformative impact. Indus OS is rare in that, it checks the box on all these counts and we like the IP that this high-quality, dedicated and passionate founding team has created. We are privileged to be a part of this exciting journey.”
According to the company’s data, it has more than 2 million active users and in its recent development, it has joined hands with Government of India’s DeitY (Department of Electronic and Technology) to develop a native operating system with integrated text-to-speech technology in regional languages.
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