(By Preethi J & Nikhil Pahwa) Update: Harish Gandhi of Canaan Partners has confirmed the investment to MediaNama. Though he declined to comment on the amount of investment, he did say that it is a typical Series A round for MCarbon. Original Story (Feb 9 2009, 11:51 AM): MCarbon, a mobile VAS company has raised venture capital funding from Canaan Partners, MediaNama has learned from reliable sources; Canaan Partners has not confirmed the deal yet, asking us to "keep guessing". MCarbon was founded in September 2007 by Brijmohan Mahendru, previously a Vice President at mobile VAS company Bharti Telesoft and Rajesh Razdan, who was a systems marketing manager at Nokia and a regional business manager Asia Pac at Bharti Telesoft before that. Their products include Channel 99, an audio and video content delivery platform, a call management platform called Virtual Call Room. On the direct to consumer front, they promote content services over interactive sesions, using their platform Speed SMS and short code 5616199. The company is held by Mobilecom professionals Inc (www.mcpsinc.com) a wireless engineering services and consultancy firm in USA. Path Infotech, an IT services company, is also a strategic investor in the firm. MCarbons list of clientele includes Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and MTNL. This is Canaan's first investment in the Mobile VAS space since Harish Gandhi joined from Airtel over a year ago; previously, they invested in Cellcast, which leverages the interactivity of Mobile on TV, with shows like Bid2Win. Earlier this year, Canaan invested in Bollywood focused community Chakpak.
