Reliance Pays $300M for Yipes

Reliance Communications Ltd., a Mumbai, India-based provider of mobile phone services, announced Monday that it would buy San Francisco-based Yipes Holdings Inc., a provider of Ethernet management services, for $300 million. Yipes was founded in 1998 as Yipes Communications and raised more than $270 million from JPMorgan Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Norwest Venture Partners, the Sprout Group and other investors. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002 and was re-launched as Yipes Enterprise Services. It has since raised more than $100 million in funding from Crosslink Capital and many returning investors, including NEA and Focus Ventures, among others.