Transpera is a mobile web video company that is based in Santa Monica, California.  The company is led by Frank Barbieri, former President at Viva Vision and former Group Product Manager at Microsoft.   Transpera has raised their second round of funding at $8.25 million from Flybridge Capital Partners, Intel Capital, and First Round Capital.  Transpera also received debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank.

“Transpera is demonstrating true leadership in the mobile video market by building an ever-expanding network of premium content partners and delivering innovative, game-changing advertising opportunities,” stated Jeff Bussgang general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners. “We continue to be pleased with their progress in setting a new standard within the mobile video landscape.”

Transpera will be using the money for expanding their product line and service customers.  Transpera already helps monetize video for AccuWeather, Associated Press, Break.com, Revision3, ManiaTV, Fox, MTV, etc.

Transpera has also hired Brian Monnin as Chief Product Officer.  Monnin is former VP of Publishing Products as Brightcove.

The venture capital arm of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC), Intel Capital has invested $20 million into Telligent.  Telligent will most likely be fully bought out within the next year.  Telligent creates enterprise social networking and business intelligence software.  Telligent will be using the $20 million in funding to increase their sales and marketing teams.  Telligent will also be stepping up their advertising.

“Intel Capital makes strategic global investments to help provide enterprises with the latest tools they need for growth, innovation, productivity improvement and cost savings,” stated Arvind Sodhani, President of Intel Capital and EVP of Intel. “These social media applications offered by Telligent will help push the boundaries of online collaboration and communication allowing companies to be more efficient and productive.”

Telligent products include Community Server, Harvest Reporting Server, Graffiti CMS, and Blog Mailr.  The flagship product is Community Server. Community Server has about 3,000 customers and includes blogs, web discussions, RSS, videos, and wikis. 

“The way people work together is changing and communication is happening in real-time at a much faster pace,” stated Telligent CEO Rob Howard. “This significant investment from Intel Capital will allow us to grow our team, our capabilities and our reach during a time of market expansion.”  Depending on certain conditions, the rest of Telligent will be acquired.

MyPunchbowl is a social network niche that focuses on event planning.  The Massachusetts start-up company gives users the ability to set-up events and track the guest list.  What makes MyPunchbowl unique from Facebook Events and evite.com is that they send out an e-mail to guests asking what dates works best for them.  Then the organizer is notified which date is ideal based on the “Pick-A-Date” algorithm.  This idea works well for investors as MyPunchbowl has just raised their Series A.

Contour Venture Partners is the lead investor in this round.  Intel Capital and eCoast Angels also participated in this round.  MyPunchbowl plans on using the funding to hire additional employees and create new features.  “We’ve seen explosive growth since our first round of funding last year,”
stated Punchbowl Software CEO Matt Douglas in a press release. “This new funding will enable us
to grow our team and pursue numerous market opportunities.”

Punchbowl Software was founded by Matt Douglas and Sean Conta.  Douglas is a former Bose Corporation and Adobe Systems employee.  At Adobe, Douglas helped Adobe Premiere gain $35 million in revenue in about 4 years.  Conta designed acoustic software at Bose.  Board members of Punch Software include Michael Rose (PNC Equity), Don Dodge (Microsoft), and Lucy McQuilken (Intel Capital). 

Prior to this round of funding, Intel Capital and The eCoast Angel Network participated in MyPunchbowl’s seed funding.

 
Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) has invested $17 million between 3 Indian companies. The three companies include Wortal Inc., Yatra.com, and Emnet Samsar Media.

Wortal Inc.
Wortal’s first product is called BuzzInTown.  Essentially BuzzInTown is a place where people in India can find things to do.  As globalization continues to spread in India and many business professionals are finding themselves flying to Bangalore to attend meetings, BuzzInTown is the place to find out what is happening while they are there.

Current cities that are support by BuzzInTown include Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, and New Delhi.  BuzzInTown highlights books, events, musicals, plays, sports, live bands, expos, and other events.  Wortal Inc. was started by Uday Bellary and Amitabh Saran. 

Yatra.com
Yatra.com is one of the biggest travel websites in India.  Yatra provides pricing, availability, and reservations for hotels, cars, buses, etc. across 5,000 cities in India.  Other investers in Yatra.com include Norwest Venture Partners, Reliance Capital, and Television 18 Group. 

Yatra was founded by Dhruv Shringi, Manish Amin, and Sabina Chopra.  Yatra’s biggest competitors is MakeMyTrip.com.

Emnet Samsara Media
Emnet Samsar Media Pvt. Ltd. is a digital advertising company that focuses on the public transportation sector.  Emnet puts digital advertising campaigns to 4.8 million passengers of public transportation in India.  Emnet will be using the funding to build additional campaigns and reach out to more buses.  Emnet is run by CEO, Suyash Chaini.

Related Links:
1. BuzzInTown
2. Yatra.com
3. Wortal
4. TheAlarmClock
5. Intel Capital Press Release

Veoh is a video sharing website based in San Diego, Calif.  Michael Eisner, former Disney chairman is on the Board of Veoh.  Eisner was one of the investors in Veoh’s $12.5 million in second round funding in April 2006.  Eisner also participated in the $25 million Series C round of funding in August 2007 as well.  And today Veoh raised $30 million in funding from Intel Capital, Adobe Systems, Shelter Capital Partners, Spark Capital, Goldman Sachs, The Tornate Company, Time Warner, and several other investors.

Veoh has two viewing options for their site.  The first option is to allow users to stream videos from the web, but they provide full episodes of television shows giving them the leg-up on YouTube.  The second option is to watch high quality videos using VeohTV through p2p technology.  Like YouTube, Veoh compresses video using Adobe Flash.

Veoh claims that they receive 28 million unique visitors who spend 100 minutes per month on their site on average.  Veoh isn’t that far behind DailyMotion and Metacafe in terms of traffic.

Information Source:
[1] TechCrunch: Veoh Raises Another $30 Million From Intel Capital, Adobe, and Gordon Crawford by Erick Schonfeld

A8.com is an online digital music website that started in 2000 in China.  The company is planning to have an IPO on the Hongkong Exchange under HK:0800.  A8 hopes to raise around HKD 217 million ($27.82 million) through the IPO. 

Previous investors in A8 include JAFCO, Intel Capital, TDF Group, IDGVC.  A8 sells ringtones, ringback tones, and IVR music for mobile phone subscribers through China Mobile and China Unicom.  Music on A8 is available through local music labels and user-generated music uploaded by the artists.

Over 50,000 songs have been uploaded to A8.com so far.  The 10,000 artists that have contributed music on A8 receive roughly 15-50% of the revenue generated from their music.  A8’s revenue in 2007 was 286 million yuan ($41.22) and profit was 55 million yuan ($7.92 million).

Information Source:
[1] China Web2.0 Review: Chinese Digital Music Service A8 To Go Public in HongKong

MyPunchBowl is a party planning website that is taking on Evite head on. VentureBeat reported today that the company has raised enough funding to keep developing for another year. The seed capital is less than $1 million and was invested by Intel Capital and eCoast Angels.  MyPunchBowl is used for setting event times, providing information about the event, determining hosts, and connecting planners with local stores that sell party supplies.

Some of the new upcoming features for MyPunchBowl includes a Facebook Application called “Party Animal” and will have a pick-a-date tool that will determine one’s party personality. Currently MyPunchBowl is used a lot for family parties, book clubs, and baby showers. Rather than generating revenue from advertising, MyPunchBowl aims to focus on sharing revenues with vendors and other partners.

MyPunchBowl is based in Boston and was founded by Matt Douglas.  MyPunchBowl has three total employees.

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]

Intel Capital, Mayfield, Comcast, and Polaris Venture Partners has provided BlackArrow $14.75 in venture capital to promote the development of BlackArrow’s advertising technology ideas. The idea behind BlackArrow is to provide advertisements on the Internet and on television. The difference between BlackArrow’s insertion of advertisements into TV compared to other TV advertisement companies providing the same service is that BlackArrow will prevent TV watchers from skipping the advertisements even though the TV watches may have a fast-forward button on their digital video recorders (DVRs).

An example that VentureBeat provided about the BlackArrow service is that if someone attempts to forward a TV show playing on ABC, “The 30-second TV spots are removed and replaced with a group of pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll ads, as well as companion ads” are displaying in these playback modes. I assume that they would be still images since it would be difficult to implement uninterrupted video advertisements on these playback modes, but you never know what is going on behind the scenes at BlackArrow.

BlackArrow is based in San Mateo, CA. BlackArrow’s origins date began in 2002. Tom Morgan and Pat Dunbar founded the Digital Media and Advertising (DiMA) Group. Through these investments in the Group, various lead programmers and advertising experts came together to solve problems in the on-demand TV market. BlackArrow was the result. Denny Wilkinson is the President and CEO of BlackArrow Inc.

[Source: VentureBeat]