Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Carmel Ventures

Facebook Acquires Snaptu For Double Digit Millions

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 23:25:39 +0000

Facebook has acquired Snaptu, a company that was founded in 2007. Snaptu provides services to the 95% of mobile users that do not have a smartphone. Snaptu created a Facebook application earlier this year called Facebook for Feature Phones. It works on 2,500 devices.

The acquisition is expected to close in the next few weeks. According to TechCrunch, the acquisition is valued between $60-$70 million, but there are other reports are pegging the deal at about $40 million. Snaptu raised over $6 million in venture funding from Carmel Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Snaptu is based in London and has offices in Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley.

[TechCrunch]

White Label Group Buying Platform Group Commerce Raises $8 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:05:00 +0000

Group Commerice Inc. has raised $8 million in Series A funding from Spark Capital, Carmel Ventures, Lerer Media Ventures, and Bob Pittman. Group Commerce is a white-label group buying platform company that was founded in 2010. Essentially they help websites launch their own daily deal services. Some of their newest clients include Dailycandy, Thrillist, and The New York Times. Group Commerce was founded by former Google and DoubleClick executives David Rosenblatt, Jonty Kelt, and Andrew Glenn. Group Commerce is based in New York.

Wireless Live Video Streaming Company LiveU Raises $11 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:20:45 +0000

LiveU has raised an $11 million Series C round of funding. LiveU is known for streaming wireless live video from a backpack device. LiveU has a low cost option for HD video streaming that broadcasts directly from a website, TV, or a device. Pitango Venture Capital, Carmel Ventures, and Canaan Partners are the three investors in this round of funding.

“Finalizing this round of investment will allow the Company to expand its presence as a significant player in global markets, in parallel to completing the development of next-generation products, based on our extensive experience working with top-tier TV and news organizations,” stated LiveU CEO Samuel Wasserman. “I am delighted that a tier-one fund such as Pitango is joining LiveU’s prestigious list of investors. I am certain that together with the current investors, Pitango will contribute greatly to LiveU’s development and success as a global company.” LiveU was founded in 2006 and their video streaming has jumped 650%.

[Red Herring]

Kontera, In-Text Advertising Company Raises $10.3 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:21:32 +0000

Kontera is an advertising company that places ads into the text of blog posts, news articles, and content for their clients. Yesterday, the company announced that they have raised $10.3 million in a second round of funding. The lead investor was Carmel Ventures and Sequoia Capital with Lehman Brothers participated. A General Partner of Carmel, Rina Shainski will be joining Kontera’s board.

“The field of In-Text Advertising is rapidly growing and enhancing the world of online advertising, which is eager for innovation. We believe that Kontera, with its unique offering and superior technology, is well-positioned to lead in this growing market,” stated Shainski.

The funding will be used for the purpose of scaling research and development along with marketing. Kontera’s advertising system seems to be rather successful in terms of click-through-rates (CTR’s). Sometimes Kontera sees CTR upwards at 10%.

“We at Kontera continue to deliver on our vision for the In-Text market by serving ads and information that best match the user’s intent as deduced from the content the user is browsing,” stated Yoav Shaham, the CEO and founder of Kontera. “With user intent driving the growth for online activities today, from social networking and widgets to blogging and product reviews, Kontera is the right choice to maximize value for publishers, advertisers and users alike.”

The Kontera blog is available at: http://blog.kontera.com/

References:
[1] Kontera Press Release (via Yahoo! Finance)

Recent Tech Funding: Oodle, Amp’d, Eyeblaster, MyCoupons, Ludic Labs, and Boorah

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 01:20:32 +0000

Oodle is a startup that has over 20 million classified ads and features listings from all over the U.S. and the UK. Oodle has raised $11 million in a 2nd round from current investors, Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures along with new investor, JAFCO Ventures. The first round was $5 million. Oodle has a partnership with The Washington Post (D.C.) and The Sun (British tabloid owned by News Corp).

This is Amp’d Mobile’s 5th round of funding and the amount is quite substantial. According to the SEC, Amp’d has raised $107 million. This round of funding was provided by Old Lane Management (hedge fund created by former Morgan Stanley execs) and joins previous venture backers: Columbia Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Intel Capital, MTV Networks, Tudor Investments and Universal Music. The CEO of Amp’d is Peter Adderton, who also founded Boost Mobile.

Gal Trifon and Ofer Zadikario founded Eyeblaster in 1999 and has established the company as a leader in digital marketing. The company had announced today that it has raised $30 million in funding from private investors. The company has been profitable every year since 2002. The company was founded in Israel and had previously raised $10 million ($8 of which came from Insight Venture Partners). The current investors are Eli Barkat (BRM Capital), Jonathan Kolber (Koor Industries, Ltd.), Shlomo Dovrat (Carmel Ventures), Harel Beit-On (Carmel Ventures), and Nir Barkat. Eyeblaster designs rich media and standard banners.

MyCoupons, a Pittsburgh-based company that was the first online coupon site launched in 1995 and took in $750,000 to re-launch its product… as a social network. “We have invested close to three quarters of a million dollars over the past year and we are proud to be able, today, to announce our re-birth” stated a company representative [Source: alarm:clock]. Jason Wolfe, the original founder of MyCoupons had bought back the domain name from Direct Response Technologies after the Save.com (who bought it for MyCoupons.com for $20M) went bankrupt after the dot-com bust.

Ludic Labs is a San Mateo-based company that is run by Dr. Brian Totty. According to alarm:clock, Totty was most recently a Venture Advisor at Foundation Capital and was a Founding VP of Research and Development and a General Manager of Inktomi. Inktomi was bought by Yahoo! in March 2003. “Ludic Labs is creating a mass-scale, social-media service for internet and mobile devices” stated a Ludic Labs representative. The company says that they are well funded and are planning on hiring Python, Web UI, and Internet Service developers around Silicon Valley shortly.

Boorah, a retaurant review website based in New York has raised angel funding and is now looking for venture capitalist funding. The company was founded by Nagaraju Bandaru and Eric Moyer. Both of them were previous executives for wireless broadband provider, MetroFi. Moyer presented BooRah at the past DEMO conference.

[Information Source: PaidContent and alarm:clock]