Locally the company came into the news with the deployment of its product iPay at Sampath Bank. The iPay software suite is the first truly Sri Lankan based fully automated online Internet Payments System.

Dinesh Rodrigo, Managing Director/CEO of Interblocks speaking on why they approached Nextventures said, "We went with Nextventures as it was more of smart money that has mutual value addition. They also work with greater flexibility, dynamism and were quick in decision-making despite the comprehensive evaluations. As a VC they act with a long term vision and assist us with a lot of input and recommendations than just trying to prescribe and monitor".

Nextventures Limited was launched in April this year as the new face of PVIC with broad based equity and management expertise from the private sector to manage PVIC's funds. Nissanka Weerasekera, Managing Director/CEO of Nextventures said that this was their first investment after restructuring and that their portfolio is not restricted to IT companies but that it is a preferred area of investment. He added that they are also pro-active in identifying opportunities and as such they decided to fund Interblocks.

Zohair Haiderally, the Investment Analyst who evaluated the business plan of Interblocks said, "Firstly we were very happy that Interblocks was focusing in the Asia Pacific region as this has been identified as a hyper growth area in the next few years. The company's business model is different to other software start-ups as their software development work is product based. HR is an important aspect in any deal evaluation and we were very pleased that their recruitment was well planned out and the team had been recruited from various backgrounds to make a strong second level complementing the needs of the company.

"Ours was no overnight decision. During this period they had already developed five products and proved that they are not a body shopping operation. This increased our comfort level. Further, their business plan and budgets were realistic and they had a good number of positive deal flows lined up by this time. They also showed good potential for high profitability in year two and three, and this is basically what we are looking for".

Interblocks is a comprehensive e-business solutions company formed in August 2000. The company markets iSuite - a rich product suite comprising Internet based procurement, auctions, multi-supplier catalog system, an Invoicing/Bill Presentment and Payment System and Supply and Distribution chain management systems. Application Software developed by Interblocks is J2EE compliant and fully XML based thereby enabling compliance across all major platforms and e-business standards, using industry leading application servers such as iPlanet Application Server, IBM Websphere and BEA's Weblogic.