OneVentures leads $1.1m round for Australia mobile video spin-out
Australian venture capital group One Ventures has led a A$1.1 million ($1.1 million) round of seed investment in Incoming, a mobile video start-up spun out of NICTA, a government-funded information and communications technology research company.
US-based Citrix Startup Accelerator and NICTA also took part in the round. The new company, which has premises in the Australian Technology Park in Sydney, is the 11th company to spin out from NICTA.
Incoming produces Incoming TV, a content delivery network and recommendation engine for mobile platforms. Available as a mobile app, it pre-loads content using available wi-fi networks, eliminating streaming and buffering. The apps draws from information on the user's device, including contextual data such as time of day, location, usage patterns and behaviour to download to most relevant content.
"Incoming allows mobile networks to be used more efficiently in off peak periods and enhances the user's experience by avoiding buffering and other interruptions common to streamed content," said David McKeague, CEO of Incoming, in a statement. "The mobile industry estimates that over 20% of subscribers watch mobile videos on any given day, accounting for over 50% of global mobile data traffic on wireless networks. This is costly for users, carriers and content providers."
Dr. Michelle Deaker, managing partner of OneVentures and a NICTA Board Member, added that Incoming had the potential to unlock 30-40% of untapped mobile network capacity likely to be worth up to A$20 billion by 2016.
There have been a number of investments in the mobile video space in Asia in recent months. Last November, SingTel Inov8 joined exisiting investors New Enterpricse Associates (NEA) and JAFCO and lead a $13 million round of Series D funding in mobile video firm Vuclip. This came just a month before Nexus Ventures-backed video advertising network Vdopia secured $3.4 million in Series B funding.
More recently, in March, NEA and Headland Capital Partners-backed ValueFirst acquired mobile video service clk2c.com.
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