News Highlights

• Intel Capital sees tremendous growth potential for India’s technology industry.

• Investments underscore Intel’s commitment to support technology innovation in India.

MUMBAI, Sept. 30, 2011 – Intel Capital, Intel’s global investment organization, today announced plans to invest approximately US$20million, in six Indian companies. The investments are part of Intel Capital’s ongoing efforts to support Indian technology innovation and entrepreneurship.

“Indian entrepreneurs are increasingly at the forefront of innovation, using technology to change the way we live and do work. Intel Capital’s investments in these six companies will help them grow their businesses and push into new markets,” said Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and executive vice president of Intel.

The six companies that Intel Capital plans to invest in are:

• Saankhya Labs Pvt. Ltd., a fabless semiconductor company;

• Testing Czars, a global independent test engineering and solutions provider for mobile applications;

• Financial Inclusion Network and Operations (FINO), a business and banking technology platform provider with an extensive services delivery channel.

• What’s on India Pvt. Ltd., India’s premier electronic programming guide for television;

• enStage, an electronic payment solutions and processing provider;

• DURON Energy Pvt. Ltd., a pioneer in affordable solar power products designed for off-grid use in emerging markets.

Three investments – Saankhya Labs, Testing Czars, and FINO – have been completed. Intel Capital has signed investment agreements with What’s on India, enStage and DURON Energy. Details of these six investments, including the amount to be invested in each company were not disclosed.

“The computing revolution is just starting in India. As PC ownership rises among Indian households, there is growing demand for online services and content. Intel is working closely with our Indian customers to help them meet this demand,” said Navin Shenoy, vice president and general manager, Asia-Pacific, at Intel.

Funding for the investments announced by Intel Capital comes from the US$250 million Intel Capital India Technology Fund established in December 2005. This fund invests in Indian technology companies to stimulate local innovation and the continued growth of India’s information technology industry.

Completed investments:

TestingCzars provides a new generation software test products that automate testing of Web, mobile and client/server applications, which are up to five times faster and 10 times more cost productive compared to typical approaches. The company also provides a range of independent testing services for customers in different industries. TestingCzars’ services and products help companies increase quality and test coverage, while speeding up software release cycles. Intel Capital’s investment in TestingCzars will fund further development of its test automation technology.

Saankhya Labs is a supplier of software-defined demodulation solutions (semiconductor and firmware) for universal digital TV, analog TV, radio, and other broadcast media. Saankhya’s innovative approach allows for global standards coverage and convergence of multiple components into a single demodulation device. The funding will be used to develop additional product offerings and fund expansion of worldwide marketing and sales operations.

FINO is a business and banking technology platform combined with an extensive services delivery channel. The company enables micro-transaction sourcing and acquisition through 15,000 transaction points in 300 districts across 24 states and has a customer base of over 39 million.

Signed Investment Agreements:

What’s On India Pvt. Ltd. is India’s premier TV guidance company working with all major TV networks and operators. The company’s vision is to enable TV content search, discovery and guidance across varied platforms and technologies. What’s-On-India’s technology vertical runs India’s largest multi-platform, multi-lingual, multi-device electronic program guide (EPG) system that covers more than 550 TV channels on the source side and powers EPGs into more than 20 million set-top-boxes and devices on the destination end. The media vertical of the company runs the “What’s-On-India” channel that is currently available in more than 30 million households across DTH and Cable besides other media assets such as portals, widgets and apps on tablets, mobile and smart-TVs. The investment is aimed at expanding the technology vertical into new and emerging technologies as well as strengthening the company’s owned media portfolio.

enStage is an innovative payment solutions and processing provider for the global marketplace. The company’s technology enables customers to offer secure payments at the point of sale, on the Internet, or via mobile device or via interactive voice recognition. The funds will be used for expansion of the company.

DURON Energy is a manufacturer and distributor of affordable consumer solar power products designed for off-grid use in emerging markets. Current products from Duron™ include Duron Pro, Duron Breeze and Duron Mega, all-in one portable solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems designed for use in rural India. Headquartered in Bangalore, the company operates on a market-driven approach to help address the challenge of inadequate access to electricity around the world.

Intel Capital in India

Intel Capital was one of the first investment organizations to enter India in 1998. The Intel Capital team in India is led by Sudheer Kuppam, managing director of Intel Capital India, Japan, Australasia and Southeast Asia, and includes six investment directors: Pradeep Tagare, Varsha Tagare, Anupam Srivastava and Deepak Gupta in Mumbai, and Amit Behl and Mahesh Vaidya in Delhi.

About Intel

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices. Additional information about Intel is available at newsroom.intel.com and blogs.intel.com.

About Intel Capital

Intel Capital, Intel’s global investment organization, makes equity investments in innovative technology start-ups and companies worldwide. Intel Capital invests in a broad range of companies offering hardware, software, and services targeting enterprise, home, mobility, health, consumer Internet, semiconductor manufacturing and cleantech. Since 1991, Intel Capital has invested more than US$10 billion in over 1,140 companies in 51 countries. In that timeframe, 191 portfolio companies have gone public on various exchanges around the world and 268 were acquired or participated in a merger. In 2010, Intel Capital invested US$327 million in 119 investments with approximately 44 percent of funds invested outside the U.S. and Canada. For more information on Intel Capital and its differentiated advantages, visit www.intelcapital.com.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries.

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

CONTACTS:

These products, targeted at villages and towns with no or low availability of electricity, will ensure availability of power during power cuts. The well designed and technically superior Duron Solar products bring the benefits of electricity to the households even in the remotest of areas. The easy‐ to‐ install DURON Solar products have low recurring cost and help replace kerosene lamps and other expensive alternative sources of electricity. These products harnessing, easily available solar energy, not only provide clean, smoke free and environmentally safe electricity, but also offer tremendous savings and convenience to the users.

Duron Solar’s products offer many distinctive features‐

• Plug‐and‐play for ease‐of‐use and service
• Portable design for multi‐purpose usage
• Microcontroller based design for battery protection and battery life
• Robust rural market centric design (Battery level indicator, dim and bright light switches, dust proofing and long lasting water-proof LED lights)
• Wide spread distribution with efficient service after sales network

DURON Solar has been operating in the Karnataka market for the last two years and its product DURON PRO is an essential and trusted part of thousands of households. Based upon the feedback from customers about the need to have a DURON Solar product which can run a fan, DURON BREEZE is being launched in the Karnataka market.

DURON BREEZE offers three‐in‐one benefits:

• A DC pedestal fan
• Two energy efficient LED based lights
• Mobile phone charger

Speaking on the occasion of the launch of DURON BREEZE, Mr. Ajay Awasthi, President & CEO of the company said, “The philosophy of DURON Solar is to use latest technology to offer high quality and reliable products to its customers. Our US based investor, Idealab is known for pioneering new technologies and the products from DURON Solar are part of that rich legacy. Coupled with this, the widespread village level sales and distribution network ensures that the company is always accessible to its customers. Our satisfied customers from different segments ‐ from Bhatta owners, beedi workers, farmers, shopkeepers to housewives bear testimony to our commitment to the people of Karnataka.” Once fully charged, DURON BREEZE can run all of the above devices for 4 hours. However, if the customer chooses to use only the fan option without the lights and the phone charging, the same can be run for more than 7 hours. The other extremely useful feature is the facility to charge mobile phones. In villages without dependable grid electricity connectivity, the facility to charge a mobile phone keeps one connected all the time.

DURON BREEZE uses latest technology and has many customer friendly features ‐ Lightning protection, Dim/Bright light option, Battery level indicator and the innovative Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) technology to derive maximum power from the solar panels. The aesthetically designed products are portable, easy‐to‐install and are backed up by a well spread out sales and service network. “Apart from the many customer friendly features, the use of the latest international technology in DURON BREEZE ensures that running cost for 4 hours per day is less than Rs. 2. This brings in huge savings for our customers while
ensuring consistent availability of electricity during the usage time,” said Mr. Awasthi. “The product cost can be typically recovered in 2‐3 years through the savings. If one adds to this, clean reliable power, the benefits are really significant,” he added.

DURON Breeze will be available in Karnataka market from the first week of September.

About DURON Solar

DURON Energy Pvt Ltd. head quartered in Bangalore, is an Idealab company, a renowned California, USA based incubator of technology companies. DURON Solar (www.duronenergy.com), the brand name of the company, was founded with the mission to bring power to millions that live without adequate power by harnessing solar energy. It has been rapidly expanding its operations in the Indian rural markets with a growing product line to serve the needs of various customer segments. With its superior technology, focus on quality and efficient service‐after‐sales network, DURON Solar is quickly establishing itself as a leading player in the Indian market.

Contact Details:
3rd floor, No. 50, Zatakia Centre
Above Reliance Footprint
100 Feet Road, Indiranagar
Bangalore, Karnataka, 560 038
India
+91 80 4347 9393
www.duronenergy.com
PR Contact – Vernie Sannoo 9900064290

It is not everyday that a young consultant at McKinsey & Co, one of the world’s largest management consultancy firms, trades in a job at the firm’s Seattle office for the rough and tumble of business in rural India. But that is just what John Howard did when he launched Duron Energy, a renewable energy company that has just started sales of solar-powered plug and play devices for lighting and battery recharges in villages across Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.

Read full article

A startup based in Bangalore, India, is selling an off-the-shelf device for less than the cost of a one-night stay in an average hotel in downtown San Francisco that can offer rural Indians a way to generate and store solar power, charge cell phones and other appliances, and run a set of LED lights.

Read the full article online

Our new website is www.duronenergy.com

Learn more about this incredible organization here:  http://www.worldvision.in/

Bangalore: Duron Energy, a major player in affordable energy generation products, is targeting rural markets in Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh with off-the-shelf solar home systems.

Read the full article online

Lucknow:  The abysmal power situation in Uttar Pradesh may be causing heartburn among senior government officials, who are hard pressed to bridge the demand-supply gap, but for John Howard and Amit Shah, co-founders of Bangalore-based Duron Energy, it provides the biggest opportunity to promote solar energy.

Read the full article online

As I considered our work over the past 14 (or so) months, a few choice moments punctuate my experience.  I wanted to share with you my three favorite moments at DWPower to date.

Moment 1: We might be on to something…

For the month of November in 2008, Hasit and I lived in Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh and worked in the surrounding villages.  The entire team had spent the prior few months developing prototypes for the Indian market.  Hasit and I were testing these prototypes with potential customers in the villages around Hardoi.  After an initial interview, we would leave a prototype with a test participant for a week, visiting often to garner feedback and provide support.

One particular test participant was a middle-aged lady with a mentally handicapped husband.  She supported her family by working at the local NGO and tending to her two acres of farmland.  In addition to her husband, she lived with two daughters—about 17 and 12.  She forced her daughters to attend school (against the norms for the village) and encouraged them to study in the evenings.  Unfortunately, her daughters always complained of the light provided by the kerosene—it was too dim to study in and the smoke caused their eyes to burn.

As we visited the household throughout the week that our product was there, we could see them getting used to the light in the house.  On our last day working with that house, as we prepared to collect the product, the woman and her daughters invited us to sit with them for a cup of tea.  As we drank tea and socialized, they began telling us of all the benefits of the product that we had left with them.  The daughters enjoyed studying, the mother was able to cook in light and the whole village used the lit front porch to socialize.  The mother told us of the impact the prototype had on their life in just one week, and that she believed this product would make a huge difference to people in India.

This feedback energized me.  For the first time since I had joined DWP, I had a strong sense that we were on to something…

Moment 2: Making DURONs…

I moved to India to ramp up our office and manufacturing capacity at the end of January in 2009.  Over the next few months the team and I worked with suppliers to develop our supply chain and manufacturing process.  We spent days with different suppliers– perfecting designs, negotiating costs, setting up production processes, etc.

One of the suppliers that we worked most with was our plastic mold maker.  James had designed a beautiful casing for the DURON and we had contracted a local Gujarati mold maker to produce the die tool.  We had pushed him to meet our timeline as the die-making was the longest lead time item.  His office and factory were in the industrial part of Ahmedabad—way off the beaten path that we usually took.  Hasit and I would visit him regularly to ensure that progress was on track.

James actually landed in India the morning that we were supposed to get our first plastic pieces out of the die.  We picked him up from the airport and went straight to the die maker’s facility.  We watched them complete the final polishing (after pulling two all-nighters to complete the die on time) and mount the die.  We watched in awe as the first pieces of plastic came out of the die.  They were misformed (because the die  was not  warm yet) and the color was off (we would later standardize our DURON blue)… but the plastic was forming.  The DURON had turned from napkin sketches, to computer drawings, to hardened steel dies and finally to the physical plastic housing we saw in front of us—we could not have been more thrilled.

These plastic pieces were the last of the material required to build our first batch.  To date, we had made a few test units to confirm the design, but these would be the first units to be produced on the manufacturing line.

I watched the DURON’s get packed and remembered the reaction that our test participant had in Hardoi.  I imagined how people would feel when they brought this box home and opened up their new home energy system.

Later that day, I remember looking at the first 35 packed boxes and preparing them to be shipped out.  It was a memorable moment—seeing the past few months of effort in the form of a product.

Moment 3: Tomorrow!

My third favorite moment is actually right now.  One of the best parts of being a social entrepreneur is that we are always thinking about tomorrow.  The progress of our business is based very much on the decisions we make today and how we implement them in the future.  As a young company, our memory is short and we are able to learn and adapt from yesterday very quickly.

We are careful to learn from the past, but we certainly do not get bogged down by it.  I am learning that an important part of social entrepreneurship is optimism.  We just don’t have time or energy to be pessimistic—it is better to use our effort on finding solutions.

I am currently on a plane back to Ahmedabad and am excited about what tomorrow is going to bring.  There will inevitably be more challenges that we will have to push through, but the opportunity to provide energy to the rural markets motivates me.  I just can’t wait to “make things happen!”