Two-time Winner Helps Businesses Improve Cash Flow Management
03 March, 2004
By - Joseph Giarraputo


There are few women who have founded venture-funded technology companies. Veena Gundavelli, the chief strategy officer at Emagia in Santa Clara, California, happens to be on her second. She first co-founded Solix Technologies, an enterprise application services company, and helped grow the company to $20 million in revenues, with marquee customers, worldwide operations and more than 350 employees worldwide. Solix has been recognized as one of the 500 fastest-growing private companies by Inc magazine and is now expanding into the application data management space.

With that success under her belt, Gundavelli set about getting her next venture, Emagia, off the ground. She raised $7 million in first-round funding in March 2000 and a further $7.5 million in March 2003 from leading venture capital firms such as Sigma Partners and WestBridge Capital. Emagia, which sells products that provide automation and business intelligence on cash-flow processes to improve cash-flow management, focuses on driving down days' sales outstanding, bad debts, operating costs, working capital and interest expenses.

Emagia targets companies with $500 million-plus in sales and already includes Solectron, Network Associates and Hyperion among its customers. Emagia has gained traction because "we brought value to customers," Gundavelli says. "Solectron realized $15 million in the first year with Emagia. Hyperion slashed their days' sales outstanding by more than 25% within six months of deployment. Leiner Health, a leading pharmaceutical products company, reduced their chargebacks by 30% in the first year with Emagia," Gundavelli adds.

Emagia sales to date have been limited to the US, but it plans to open sales offices in London to service Europe in the first quarter of 2004. A private company, Emagia doesn't report sales or profits, but it does have about 60 employees in the US and 40 performing developmental work in India-and probably has sales in the area of $10 million to $15 million.