Edinburgh – 6th March, 2008 – Rapid Mobile Media Ltd, providers of innovative mobile advertising and mobile application provisioning software platforms, today announced the completion of a second investment round of £2m led by US venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA) who were joined by Alliance Trust Equity Partners (ATEP) as new investors in the company. Existing investors Pentech Ventures and Scottish Enterprise’s Scottish Venture Fund also participated in the round.
The new cash investment will provide Rapid Mobile Media with working capital to expand on current successes and accelerate the commercial deployment of its Ad360 mobile advertising platform and Active Provisioning automatic mobile application deployment technology.
“Rapid Mobile offers a unique approach to solving the device diversity issues that many organisations face when delivering mobile advertising and services”, said Mike Ramsay, Venture Partner at NEA who also joins the Rapid Mobile Media Board as Investor Director. “By enabling the rapid deployment and monetisation of services, we believe Rapid Mobile is ideally positioned to achieve significant success in the rapidly growing mobile advertising market – providing for the delivery of high quality display advertisements both within applications and mobile internet sessions.”
“We are delighted to welcome both NEA and ATEP as new investors to the company,” commented Jeremy Copp, CEO of Rapid Mobile Media “Their experience will provide us with invaluable guidance as we grow the organisation to secure a leadership position within the emerging mobile advertising and mobile services markets. We have already demonstrated the capabilities and robustness of our platforms in key reference customer deployments, now we are in a position to build value within the organisation on the back of current successes”.
Raymond Abbott, Managing Director of Alliance Trust Equity Partners, added: “The seasoned senior management team at Rapid Mobile Media, with their experience of the wireless market and track record of delivering carrier-grade solutions, provides the ideal base for commercial success. This experience, coupled with the company’s proven technology, means that we are excited at the investment prospect that Rapid Mobile provides”. Richard Hope, Investment Director at ATEP, also joins the Rapid Mobile Media Board as Investor Director.
Pentech Ventures and Scottish Enterprise have both previously invested in Rapid Mobile Media, and they both continue their support through further investment in this round. Dr. Sandy McKinnon, Pentech Investment Director and Rapid Mobile Board member, said: “Pentech see great potential for Rapid Mobile to play a key role in shaping the multi-billion dollar global mobile advertising market, and we are delighted to be able to continue to provide support to the company to enable their growing commercial successes”.
“We are proud to support Rapid Mobile Media as a business within the Scottish media and technology industry”, said Neil Ross, Head of the Scottish Venture Fund. “The continuing success of Rapid Mobile is a validation of Scottish Enterprise’s strategy of providing seed and co-investment funding to promising Scottish companies with the potential to grow.”
Rapid Mobile’s Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Richard M. Marshall, thanked Pentech and Scottish Enterprise for their continued support. “It is a welcome validation of our software technology and marketing strategy, both of which began when the company was founded in 2004”, he said. “Having a world-class entrepreneur like Mike Ramsay on the Board is invaluable. His experience as co-founder and CEO at TiVo will be a great help as we address the complex, global mobile market.”
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