« Ten Tech IPOs In Europe Over $100M | Main | Meetic Makes Fourth Acquisition - This Time In The UK »
January 09, 2007
VCs And Media Companies Back Truphone's $24.5M Series A
Truphone, a UK-based startup enabling wireless VOIP, announced today that it raised £12.5 million ($24.5m), in a large-sized Series A round. The deal was led by Germany's Wellington Partners, and brought in new investors Independent News & Media (British media group) and Burda Digital Ventures ( German media group). They join existing investors Eden Ventures (UK) and business angels.
Truphone, which intends to go international, needs "lots of money to beat Vodaphone and decimate the unnecessary cashflow of the mobile operators on GSM and 3G", according to Alexander Straub of Straub Ventures, a very early investor in Truphone, who we emailed with this morning.
Mobile telephony startups looking to sink their fangs into the mobile telco cash cow are hot with investors these days. Nordic startup, Rebtel, which has a different approach to free cellphone calls, also raised a big Series A in October, about $20M worth.
We've been tracking Truphone for a while, since we first heard early investor Alexander Straub promote it at an event in Zurich last March, so readers cannot say that this was an under the radar venture, or that there were no hints that a funding round was in progress.
The new capital will be used to increase the number of handsets it supports (right not it is mainly on higher-end Nokia phones) and for the international growth effort.
Read - Truphone's Cheesy HQ (a:c euro)
Read - This Time Around Europe's Disruptive(a:c euro)
Read - Why Rebtel Raised So Much VC
Posted on January 9, 2007 10:23 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2767
