The Switzerland-based Nivio, which has its Indian hub in Delhi, is all set to

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raise $8 million private equity funding by the end of the current month itself. The five-year-old cloud computing company founded by two technopreneurs – Sachin Dev Duggal and Saurav Pradeep Dhoot – had a close to $15 million fund backing by Deutsche Bank Global Pension Funds, Royal Bank of Canada’s Pension Funds and bankers from Goldman Sachs and Barclays.

Sachin Dev Duggal, the 26-year old president and CEO of Nivio (who was the youngest Indian attendee at the World Economic Forum) told Financial Chronicle on Monday that this fund would be utilised in some of the proposed launches by the company, strengthening of the R&D network and expansion into new territory.

The firm, which currently operates out of Australia, the UK and India (India being their largest operation) besides having its corporate headquarters in Switzerland, has drawn up elaborate plans to put up shops and start operations from North America and West Asia by this calendar year.

The company at present has a headcount of 108 across the world — of them as many as 80 are in India. It now plans to have a manpower of 500 by 2012. “The kind of business we are in, if we grow exponentially in headcount, that means you are not progressing at all. Since we are expanding into new territories we will be requiring some minimum numbers. My estimate is we would be 500 by 2012,” Duggal said.

Nivio is the world’s first online windows desktop that aims to be accessible from any internet connected device providing a wide variety of services on demand. These services include rental of software applications, access to a rich library of educational content and expandable storage to keep pictures, music and date online and secure. The company promises to seamlessly integrate and link up content providers, OEMs and telecom operators.

“In India we have already teamed up with Bharti. We are finalising similar arrangements with four-five operators in Europe, one in the US and two in Australia shortly. We also have 30-35 operators in our pipeline globally. Once all these are firmed up, ideally we should look at a business of $1 billion in five years from now,” said Duggal.

The company, meanwhile has lined up series of new roll-outs: cloud PC (online desktop) in next few weeks, rental of software-online and offline in a month time. The online storage from the Nivio’s stable is already available in the market.