Seventymm raises 12mn $ from NEA-Indo US Ventures
Seventymm has raised $12mn (Rs 50 crores) from NEA-Indo US Ventures for expansion into 40 cities in the next two years.
Seventymm has earlier raised funding from Matrix and DFJ, has 70,000 customers and plans to reach 4 million subscribers with revenues to the tune of Rs 1,500 crore in the next five years
The business, which claims a consumer base of 
70,000 people and is adding 7000 consumers a month, has an average revenue per user of Rs 250.
Seventymm aims to reach four million members in next five years with a presence in 40 cities in two years. On the immediate roadmap are Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Pune. – source
Have you used their service?
Recommended Read: Online Movie Rental Services : Seventymm and MovieMart to Expand, Moser Baer is distributing DVDs on cart
Related Startup: FlickXPress
About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in.
He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]
Is that 250 per month per user?
Yes, i have used their service. The overall service is decent, though i have a lot of problems with their website. The movie recommendation is very bad, they could probably just copy Netflix/IMDB to improve it(at least for the English titles). The focus should be on this instead of trying to build yet another “social networking” around movies. Recommendation system is in itself putting the wisdom of crowds into action.
I’ve been a memeber for just about a month now (I live in bangalore). My experience so far has been extremely bad. I have managed to get two movies delivered to me after making several requests through web, sms and the customer care phone number. For the last one week I have been struggling to get the next movie. The system seems to be so bad that even complaining through the customer care number/email id doesn’t have any effect. I regret that I took a one-year membership.
I think the investors should be worried if this is how the company works.
@suresh true,but their catalog size needs to be improved a lot and there are a little hickups in their deliveries. Content sutra says bigflix is intalks with these guys, not sure. Any ways these guys deserve a pat as an early mover to the market . But needs a little bit more aggression to tackle “biggies”.
[...] Internet portals haven’t been able to gain major traction (aren’t you surprised that seventymm has only 70K customers?) and are maybe, available for a cheap [...]
This news really breaks my heart
Had signed up with 70mm for the 3 month period. Had a movie(Goodfellas) in my rental queue for 2 and half months and it never got delivered. The call center and the customer service is pathetic. I had about 5 movies in my queue and I must have called them at least 6-8 times to check why there was nothing delivered for a month and all I heard was “you will receive them as soon as possible”.
And now that the membership period has expired, I regularly receive mails and messages to renew the service.
My suggestion: If you planning to subscribe to seventymm, please research all other options and if you dont find anything else, research again.
P.S: guys i spoke to at the call center.. Santosh Acharya and his manager.. received only well rehearsed apologies.
The business they currently have is utterly unscalable. I can’t understand the fact that these VCs are willing to bet big dollars on pretty bland entities/players in HR intensive and fickle businesses. With the amount of choice on TVs, I don’t see this biz getting the scale or mass adoption it needs to survive in the long term. By the way majority of Indian masses, or atleast those who consume movies as regular staple are not really aware of world cinema or obscure hollywood movies in general. Forget the world cinema, we don’t even give much crap for the alternative cinema, or creative regional cinema produced in our own country.
Considering that 70k sucbscribers and has 400ppl workin on the ground to deliver the crap that is any way played on the gazillion TV channels, or on the net for free, along with the net piracy, it is a doomed investment for sure. Indian intenet VCs are deadbeats – it’s quite apparent from the track record of them in intenet space. When they can dump $8mil in minglebox, $20mil in asklaila, why should it matter that any of these companies really got funded (Ashish, it’s not your fault buddy).
I think getting VC funding for beaten down, uninnovative, execution and scale based business in the internet space in India is more like a hex, and seems like a spell of imminent doom. VC funding is a buzz killer for sure, at least based on the past history.
Based on 70k users and 250rupees per month,with Rs.43 for $1, the total revenues are about $405k per month and about $5mil per year. Even if the delivery guys are getting paid Rs.10k, the cost is about $100k/mo. Who is gonna pay for the inventory, offices, executive salaries, advertising etc. This seems to be a VC play about getting the company getting bought out by one of these fat publicly listed companies. Believe me, many of the majore players are still way over valued based on the current financials and future prospects.
PS: Most of the Indian VCs handling your operations don’t really understand the internet landscape. Moreover, none of them have really built, or were involved in any worthwhile or successful internet or new media venture in India. The only two notable deals that amount to anything like a payout were the Indiaworld and bazee deal, back in web dog years of the new millenium. Believe it ot not, nothing since then. So lets stop pretending like you really are looking for a real payout. For the damn millions you burned here, should naukri.com save face – don’t think so.
Lifeblob was another investment that never made any sense, and it just happened last week. Let the madness continue – Web2.0 bubble has hit the final act in India. Excuse me.
[...] Are VCs following a herd mentality? Maybe (read this comment). [...]
The 70k users are definitely not all active. The renewal rate given the service quality is bound to be extremely low. The 250 would be more the average per active user.
@keepitreal – cheers man. ur comment lives up to ur handle.
I am not sure if part of the VC due diligence process is talking with company’s customers. I am sure there are happy customers as well, but looking at the trend here seems like customer satisfaction is very low.
We’ve had terrible experience with SeventyMM as well. We were members for about 4 months and then we stopped the service. Quality of DVDs were poor — scratchy, some where not even DVDs (VCDs) etc. Customer service sucks. Now one can buy a new DVD from Moser Baer at a much cheaper price.
If NEA has put it in 50 Cr and assuming SeventyMM diluted 20%. Then pre-money valuation of this business is around 200Cr ($50M). At 70K customers, value/customer is around $700. That just seems quite high to me.
I think that Big Flix’ move to do the online-offline is a great is a far superior model when compared to Seventy mm’s. Online rental with Seventy mm, based on my friends’ experiences requires a lot of planning, and actually often more legwork.
I’ve often picked up DVDs from my local store at the spur of the moment, on the way home from work – I just walked into the store, saw the DVDs that were on display and picked even a mediocre movie, just because I felt like watching *any* movie. On the other hand I’ve often lamented them not having an online catalog, which makes browsing and booking movies much easier. Big Flix’ model fulfills both needs.
Read my post on why I think Reliance will emerge victorious in the ‘DVD rental wars’ at: http://www.moneyvidya.com/blog/?p=369
Gautam Kshatriya
gautam.kshatriya@moneyvidya.com
http://www.moneyvidya.com
[...] out Ashish Sinha’s (pluggD.in) post on the same topic here. Share and [...]
But the SeventyMM tele callers are really really good
The buggers just don’t give up. So impressed was I by the girl trying to sell me the “Discounted package” (if I made the decision right then in 30 seconds) that I couldn’t resist asking her the reason behind her extraordinary persistence and motivation.
I love the fact that none of these “funded” companies would ever come back and comment on such posts and put forward their point of view in front of angry and dissatisfied customers. These are paying customers here writing on one of the most widely read blogs on internet in India. wow!
I would not be too surprised if they go offline now and open up some stores. 50 crores is a lot of money in India.
You mean the fact that they don’t care about all this is the ‘beginning of the end’ or..?
Time will tell .. but wouldn’t you be extremely surprised and/or pissed off if companies like this go public and conquer the world .. i mean that would defy half of your posts on how a startup should be
And btw .. mginger is one more such company .. spamming all over the place … wait .. aren’t they funded by the same people? May be there is more than meets the eyes.
Oh well! I’d (and am sure others who have shared their opinion) love to eat back our words..but the reality is that too many frustrated customers don’t make a successful co.
Infact, the reason why I had asked for other’s opinion was that I myself never had any great experience of the co.but thought I was the only one (but looks like others too feels the same)..
mGinger is a diff model – they’d still rock because their ‘target grp’ has been fixed (students/housewives).
And lets remember one thing : Funding !=Success
Funding!= Success might be true Ashish.. But on a slight tangent, it does hurt the Indian internet start ups at the end of the day.
When(Am not saying IF) companies like Seventymm fail , they create create a lot of negative buzz about Indian internet companies and their poor implementation in the investment circles.
This impacts the more promising and the adventurous start ups in the internet space as the VCs get extremely conservative and apprehensive as a consequence of the above.
After using Netflix for more than 4 years i was pleased to find similar company in bangalore. but very soon i realized Seventymm means pathetic service. they give discounts but without delivering movies.
It took 6 months of persistent calling to get back my security deposit which totally contradicts of 10 days of refund time their sales people claim while selling. 8 people from my company had subscribed and within 2 months everyone cancelled it.
just wondering on 70K customer base, its 2 hard 2 believe it. Good luck to their VC’s who are pumping $ to make it next netflix. anyways VC’s arent putting it from their pocket
[...] [@KeepItReal] [...]
for some strange reason vani cola of NEA-INDO US ventures seems to get exited about the strangest company projections.Why did she feel that 70 mm needs so much money.cloning netflix concept is one thing and implementing it is one thing.
the whole VC scenario in india is a closed loop. VC’s do not look at the idea nor the business potential.
most of the funding is done to companies where the founders are friends of the managers of the funds
the VC fund managers have a unofficial agreement with the founders for a particular percentage of the funding as a commission to them.
that is the reason why only companies which got funding are again and again getting investments.
The fund managers are looking for a quick money and they are constantly looking for companies who have experienced in giving the cut they require.
From an invested amount only 30-35% of the amount reaches to the company for further growth plans and this is the reason why there is a huge requirement funds.
Say for eg, if you a funding of say $5 million, the fund managers cut may be around 10% which is around 500,000$ , isnt that a big money ??
[...] Seventymm raised $12mn from NEA-IUV, has 70,000 customers and is aiming a revenue of Rs. 1500 Crores by 2013. [...]