Nivio nabs $21 million for affordable cloud computing

Videocon, AEC Partners invest in the newest player up against Dropbox, Box.net, Evernote

One cloud computing company, that wants to make accessing and visualizing data easier for anyone, has just announced a $21 million Series A funding round Thursday.

Nivio gained this funding from Videocon (& Group Companies) and AEC Partners just days after announcing the company launch at MacWorld last month.

Nivio allows users to store up to 10GB of their documents, music, and movies in the cloud for free with the product nDrive. This service allows the sync across all of needed devices — tablets, desktops, and laptops -- and uses minimal bandwidth since it only transmits changes made to documents, not refreshing and sending the entire file. 

CEO of the company, Sachin Duggal, has been working on cloud computing technology for the past seven to launch all three products that the company started with: nDrive, nDesktop, and nApps. Each of the cloud computing and storage options are available in several different packages aimed toward students, educators, or small businesses.

Currently, Nivio is in talks with Adobe to offer its products in various suites so that students have a more attainable option than paying for the software service at a business rate. 

Nivio is in a similar space with Citrix and OnLive Desktop, but Nivio has put a greater focus on the education and small business sector that is often priced out of many of the great cloud options.

Nivio plans to use the substantial investment, led by Videocon and AEC Partners, to grow its product, expand its engineering team, and roll out its services in Europe, the Middle East, India, and Australia.

Cloud desktop computing is a rapidly growing market and with the boom in the tablet market, there are millions of people that want to sync these mobile device with many of the documents that they have on their traditional desktop.

Nivio has built an integrated technology platform with a unique IP that maximizes capacity while minimizing latency for both storage and application access through an easy-to-use app store. 

With the unique concept of allowing users to rent a Windows desktop and display it on iPhones and iPads, Nivio could gain traction in the education market that it set out to help the most. Essentially, the company services can bring an iOS device into the office, plug it into an external display, and instantly start working on an Excel spreadsheet while using the iPhone as a touchpad.

Until now, students and educators were looking to Dropbox and Evernote for some of these services, but both companies have an upper limit for the free or stander options. Cloud computing is also a vertical with some serious money being pumped in. Last October, the cloud company Box announced giant $81 million round of funding. The new funds brought Box’s total raised to $162 million.

Also in October, Dropbox announced a sizable Series B of $250 million financing from Index Ventures, with Benchmark Capital, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, RIT Capital Partners and Valiant Capital Partners also investing. Dropbox, which is estimated to be worth $4 billion has more than 45 million users and saves 1 billion files every three days.  

Nivio is certainly in a competiive environment, but one that has shown a great deal of demand and that will likey continue to grow rapidly before any of the big companies need to fight one another for new business.