Miyowa Raises $8 Million in Additional Venture Capital Financing

Miyowa, a global company providing compelling instant messaging and enriched Mobile Web 2.0 technologies, has raised $8 million in a second round of financing, bringing the company's total financing to date to $12.7 million.

 

The funding round was participated in by Techfund, who funded Miyowa's first round of financing in September 2006, and Credit Agricole Private Equity, a new investor.

 

The company proposes to use the additional financing to accelerate commercialization of existing products, bring to market a revolutionary enriched mobile instant messaging solution, and further expand operations into the U.S. and Asia, spearheaded by the opening of offices in Cupertino, California and Singapore.

 

"After five exciting years, Miyowa has proven that instant messaging can be a global success on mobile devices. This new financing further validates Miyowa's position as the worldwide leader in the mobile instant messaging market and places us in position to capitalize on the new opportunities the mobile applications market presents," said Pascal Lorne, CEO at Miyowa.

 

"The market is entering a new phase where convergence, presence and social networks will become key in next generation mobile applications. With the new financing from Techfund and Credit Agricole Private Equity, and the addition of Sergio De Acha and Tom Huang to lead our U.S. and Asia expansion efforts, Miyowa will look to address these market needs, and deploy our mobile innovations globally."

 

Miyowa is a dynamic global company whose next generation solutions enable service providers to liberate their networks, deliver aggregated rich content and services to end users.

 

Miyowa's technology is innovative and proven, and relied on by leading mobile operators around the world, processing over three million interactions per day.

 

Miyowa created the first handset independent universal end-to-end client messaging technology (MoveMessenger), compliant with all major existing standards and systems and provides mobile operators and communities with a white-labeled, scalable range of Mobile Web 2.0 Instant messaging related content and services.

 

"Global mobile usage patterns are changing. Mobile users now want to have access to all of their social desktop PC applications anywhere and at anytime," said Michel de Lempdes, investment director at Credit Agricole Private Equity.

 

"The unique technology of Miyowa answers the mobile operators' needs as they look for new mobile web usages, made possible by the launch and quick adoption of unlimited data subscriptions. We think Miyowa's ability to offer innovative, new services in an unrestrictive fashion with almost no infrastructure investment, places it in prime position to take advantage of this market change, and provide the mobile applications that operators are seeking."

 

Miyowa develops rich media mobile applications for mobile operators and handset makers. These solutions allow for premium service offerings over carrier data plans and devices, without entering restrictive relationships with social networks and IM providers. 

The company has also developed a communications protocol through an extension of the IMPS standard. The IMPS extension delivers increased responsiveness and reaction by mobile applications resulting in bandwidth reduction by 50 to 80 percent on the operators network, increased handset battery life by nearly two times, and support for mobile Web 2.0 features such as avatars, social networking and advertising.