NEWS: Anil Aggarwal's Zeevo raises $25.5 million

[FREDERICK NORONHA <fred@bytesforall.org>]

Anil Aggarwal's Zeevo raises $25.5 million

By Ela Dutt, India Abroad News Service

New York, Apr 5 - Zeevo, Inc., an Indian American fabless semiconductor
provider of Systems-n-Chip (SoC) solutions for the communications market,
Thursday announced it has closed its third round of funding with $25.5
Million in equity financing. The round is led by Dell Ventures.

Other new investors include Capital Research and Management Company and
Charter Growth Capital. Previous investors, Sequoia Capital and Raza Venture
Fund also made significant investments this round.

The company, founded by president and CEO Anil Aggarwal, said it expects to
use the money to expand sales, marketing, and operations talent for ramping
their first product line -- a Bluetooth SoC solution to production. To date,
Zeevo has raised about $42 Million.

"We are very excited to attract such a strong group of investors, including
Dell Ventures, to our shareholder base," said the Delhi-born Aggarwal, "We
continue to add high quality, value added investors to our already top tier
list of investors such as Sequoia Capital and Raza Venture Fund. We have a
great mix of strategic and financial investors who are especially important
to us in these growth stages of our company."

And the investors seem to echo the faith. "We believe that Zeevo is
positioned well to be a market leader in the Bluetooth silicon market. We
were very impressed with their execution so far," said Todd Dow from Dell
Ventures. "With its aggressive roadmap and impressive design team, we
believe that Zeevo is very well positioned to secure an important position
in providing solutions for the wireless communications market."

Zeevo, Inc. is a privately owned company that Aggarwal founded in 1999 for
"Enabling Pervasive Connectivity." This means staying connected anytime,
anywhere in order to have a true "Personal Web" that can be carried with you
at all times, Aggarwal explained to IANS.

As head of Zeevo, Aggarwal is responsible for establishing it as a leading
provider of SoC solutions for Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN)
communications. He has been in the semiconductor industry and has expertise
in strategy, customer relations, marketing, and general management.

Prior to co-founding Zeevo, he was a marketing executive with the Wireless
Products Group at Philips Semiconductor (previously VLSI Technology, Inc.)
where he was responsible for custom wireless products for the North American
market. He is a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of
Technology in Mumbai, and then went to the University of Hawaii at Manoa,
Honolulu for a further degree in engineering. He also has a business
administration degree from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia.

--India Abroad News Service