The Omidyar Network announced earlier this week that they plan to invest $30 million in India and Africa. The $30 million will be used to support global entrepreneurship and hopes to improve the quality of life for people in those areas. Omidyar Network’s announcement was made at the 5th annual meeting in New York for the Clinton Global Initiative.
“Imagine what’s possible if entrepreneurship flourishes worldwide. Omidyar Network aims to create opportunity for entrepreneurs to succeed; when they do, so do their families and communities,” stated Omidyar Network Managing Partner Matt Bannick. “People living in poverty are often ignored by mainstream businesses; we will prioritize our support for entrepreneurs providing services and products that can improve quality of life for those most in need.”
The investment is intended to be provided for high-impact entrepreneurs with proven business models. The investment will go towards both profit and nonprofit organizations. The Omidyar Network was started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam.
Omidyar Network, the investment arm of Pierre Omidyar’s wealth has made a $2 million grant. Pierre is the founder of eBay and his personal wealth is roughly $3.6 billion. The Omidyar Network was started in 2004 and there was about $270 million in assets given to the investment firm.
Some of the Internet companies that the Omidyar Network invested in include Digg, Federated Media Publishing, KaBOOM, Seesmic, Linden Lab, and Wikia. Wikia is another company that was founded by the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
Wikipedia receives about 300 million monthly unique visitors and is the 5th most visited website in the world. However Wikipedia runs on donations and does not have any advertising. At the end of last year, about 125,000 donors invested $6.2 million in helping keep Wikipedia alive.
Of that $6.2 million, $3 million was given by the Sloan Foundation and an anonymous friend gave $286,800. As part of the investment, Matt Halprin of Omidyar will be joining the Wikimedia Foundation board of directors. Before working at Omidyar, Halprin was the VP of global trust and safety at eBay.
Federated Media Publishing, the advertising brokerage company founded by John Batelle is rumored to be raising another amount of funding. The second round of funding is expected to be between $20-$30 million according to Stefanie Olsen, an editor at CNET. The first round of funding was $4.5 million by JPMorgan Partners, the Omidyar Network, and The New York Times. The Omidyar Network was founded by Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay.
Federated Media also recently employed GCA Savvian Advisors to help them work investment queries. There was a rumor floating that Federated Media was offered $100 million for a buyout, but turned it down. Ad networks around the world are raising funds and are being acquired. Google acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion and Microsoft acquired aQuantive for $6 billion. Yahoo! and AOL have also picked up a couple of advertising companies as well.
Federated Media has been generating large sums of advertising revenue and has even paid some of their clients $1 million. Federated Media’s network of publishers include TechCrunch, Mashable, GigaOM, Digg, and BoingBoing.
