IYogi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 | |
| Industry | Information technology |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2007 |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | , |
Area served | North America, Europe, Australia, India, UAE |
Key people | Uday Challu (CEO) Vishal Dhar (president of marketing) |
| Services | Technical support |
| Website | www |
iYogi is a remote technical support firm based in Gurgaon, India, with customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Canada, and India. It has been the subject of lawsuits and numerous claims of misconduct.[1]
iYogi was co-founded by Uday Challu and Vishal Dhar in 2007.[2] Sequoia Capital,[3] Draper Fisher Jurvetson,[4] Canaan Partners,[5] SAP Ventures,[6] and SVB India Capital Partners[7] are the venture capital firms that have invested in the company. The current serving director on board is Shatrugan Paswan who was appointed on 11 May, 2016.[8]
In 2009 the firm acquired Utah-based Clean Machine Inc.[9] and appointed its founder, Larry Gordon, as President Global Channel Sales.[10] In 2010, iYogi raised US$30 million in Series D round of funding led by Sequoia Capital[11] with follow-on investment from existing investors. Earlier in the same year, the company had secured investment of $15 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and others.[12] In July 2014 the Axon Partners and Madison India Capital invested $28 million into the company.[13] As of 2014, iYogi's estimated valuation was $400 million.[14]
In April 2016 the company was being sued by the US state of Washington and six or more companies, with allegations of scamming customers into buying unneeded software, falsely claiming affiliation with major companies such as Microsoft, Apple, and HP, non-payment, and non-fulfilment of service contracts.[15][16][17]
The Washington State Attorney General's Office reported on April 19, 2018, that it had obtained information indicating that "iYogi India has shed most or all of its employees and is largely defunct ... The company's U.S.-based operation appears to have shut down entirely."[18]
Location and partnerships
In February 2010, IBM signed a data center agreement with iYogi and followed it up with another partnership aimed at supporting the tech support firm's expansion plans in several countries.[19]
iYogi launched its operations in India on 7 March 2013 targeting small and medium businesses, and consumers.[20]
On 9 July 2015, iYogi partnered with the Argo Marketing Group of Lewiston, Maine for its first call center in North America. The company said that it would create 300 jobs.[21] The partnership ended in October, 2015, when Argo Marketing terminated the contract and filed a lawsuit against iYogi to collect about US$72,000; Argo CEO Jason Levesque said that, after taking on 30 employees, it had been paid about half of what it was owed. He said he decided to terminate the agreement "because of a myriad of factors", and that Argo was not interested in further partnerships with iYogi.[22]
Performance
The service was reviewed by Michael Muchmore[23] for PC Mag in April 2014 and was awarded two stars out of five. The review praised the service's low cost, polite staff, and privacy warnings, but found it performed poorly, with limited tools and cleanup, remarking that iYogi was once the value leader, but other services were now preferable in light of its lackluster performance.[24]
In April 2016 Hindustan Times published an article saying that the company was fast losing customers. iYogi employees were reported to have complained about not being paid for over a year and multiple months, and had said that over 2,500 of the 4,000 employees had left in consequence; iYogi said the number was smaller. iYogi CEO Challu spoke of a "cash flow crisis" and a "difficult time in the business cycle", but that the company would get over it, and that people quitting jobs is normal in the industry that has "50-60% attrition rate".[25]