Israeli video ringtone sharing start-up Vringo Ltd. has raised $12 million from global private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC, thereby closing its second financing round. The company was founded a year ago, and had raised $4.2 million from private investors prior to this round. The investors include company co-founder and CEO Jon Medved and former Shopping.com chairman and CEO Dan Ciporin.
Ciporin is currently a partner at Canaan Partners and chairman LGiLab, a joint initiative funding early-stage Israeli Internet startups co-founded by Gemini Israel Funds and Lightspeed Venture Partners
Medved was previously a partner in Israel Seed Partners. He said, “It was wonderful to work in venture capital, and I might return to it one day. For now, I enjoy managing a company.”
Vringo co-founder CTO David Goldfarb is a graduate of MIT, who immigrated to Israel after his completing his studies to realize his idea of ringtone sharing. Other members of the team are former managers from NMS Communications Ltd., OmniSky Israel, and Comverse Technology Inc. (Pink Sheets: CMVT.PK), Siemens, IDT, Earthlink, and Shopping.com. Medved says, “The lead team found its way to Vringo.”
Based in Beit Shemesh, Vringo develops software to create visual ringtones for mobile devices. Medved says that the company is running a beta version of its system, and that proceeds from the present financing round will enable the company to expand its activity.
Medved says, “People don’t understand that visual ringtones is big business. The audio ringtone market amounts to $6 billion. In Israel, entrepreneurs and venture capital funds completely missed this field. Today, there’s a strong market for all applications that personalize handsets. We’re targeting this market. We call it ‘Personalization 2.0’, in other words, when someone calls me, something can be displayed: a picture, favorite video, a Seinfield clip, avatar, and so on. We’ll enable users to download to their telephones clips from the internet. Today’s there’s a total separation between the internet and mobile worlds, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be combined.”
“Globes”: What will you do with the proceeds?
Medved : “We’ll launch our product for mass market worldwide and increase the number of handsets that support the application.”
Warburg Pincus manages $26 billion in assets and has invested in several Israeli companies, including Ness Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: NSTC), Alvarion Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALVR; TASE: ALVR), cVidya Networks Inc., and ophthalmic device maker NuLens Ltd.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on July 31, 2007
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