One of my favorite startups Kyte just announced it has raised $15 million in a second round of funding. The round was led by Telefónica, the world’s fourth largest global telecommunications firm, with Nokia Growth Partners, the global private equity and venture capital management arm of Nokia, and DoCoMo Capital, Inc., a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of NTT DoCoMo, Inc., the leading mobile communication company based in Japan, also participating. Other investors in this round include Swisscom, Holtzbrinck Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurveston.
Kyte presented an impressive live demo at the Mobile Launchpad at the Mobile 2.0 Conference in San Francisco in October recently.
The interesting news for me is not the $15M, which seems rather small for a Series B in this area but the distribution channel opportunities Kyte.tv opens through this deal, as Robert Scoble mentioned earlier:
“Telefónica has 230 million users. DoCoMo has 52 million. Nokia has 39% of the cell phone market share. If the Kyte player is embedded on these three it brings a HUGE audience to Kyte.”
As a true promotor of his own technology, CEO Daniel Graf announced the news on a live video conference on Kyte.
If you haven’t tried Kyte Mobile, it’s definately worthwhile you start doing so. It’s one of the only apps I know with such a cool user experience, integrating live audio and video chat interaction with other social media. Congrats to Daniel and the Kyte team!
Really looking forward how Kyte will develop the coming months and launch new features.
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Rudy De Waele
Enabling Next Generation Mobile Products & Services
Rudy De Waele is CEO & co-founder of Nyota Media - the world's first growth agency for innovative African entrepreneurs, start-ups and international companies that use technology to improve the lives of Africans.
He is a Mobile Strategist, Business Angel and Appreneur with over 18 years of experience in Internet technology, specialising in mobile innovation and start ups since 1999.
He is a co-founder of dotopen, Mobile Premier Awards, AppCircus and MobileMonday in Barcelona Spain, and is a member of the Mobile 2.0 Advisory Committee in both San Francisco and Barcelona.
Rudy has curated ground-breaking presentations in Mobile Trends 2020 (2010), Mobile Trends 2020 Africa (2011), and most recently Mobile Opportunities in Africa - Engaging the next Billion (2012).
He has consulted for Telefonica, Vodafone, MTN, Orange, Telcel, Millicom, Samsung, Nokia, BlackBerry, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Admob (acquired by Google), Louis Vuitton, Philippe Starck, Young & Rubicam, Cheil Worldwide.
A graduate from Singularity University, he has lectured at Web 2.0 Expo, The Next Web, PICNIC, next, MIDEM, Mobile 2.0, Mobile Monday and MIPTV.
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