zeotap, a technology company that helps telecom operators activate and monetize their data assets, announced Series A funding of US $6.4 million from Capnamic Ventures, Iris Capital, prominent angels and existing investors. The new investment will be employed towards zeotap’s international expansion as well as to substantially grow its global technology centre in Bangalore, India.
We’re excited to invest in zeotap and support their expansion. They’re well-poised to become the preeminent data platform in the mobile advertising ecosystem.
zeotap, a technology company that helps telecom operators activate and monetize their data assets, today announced Series A funding of US $6.4 million from Capnamic Ventures, Iris Capital, prominent angels and existing investors. The new investment will be employed towards zeotap’s international expansion as well as to substantially grow its global technology centre in Bangalore, India.
zeotap’s carrier-grade platform makes some of the most comprehensive deterministic data sets, largely inaccessible until now, available to the mobile advertising market. Importantly, it ensures compliance with strict privacy legislation and zero data leakage for operators. It works with publishers and supply-side platforms to optimize yield as well as advertisers and demand-side players to make ad buying more efficient. The company’s current client portfolio includes some of the largest telecommunications companies in Europe and Asia.
New investors in the Series A funding round, both institutional and individual, include:
- Capnamic Ventures: A venture capital fund focused on fast-growing companies in the early stages of business. It works in partnership with Iris Capital and also manages the portfolio of DuMont Venture. Notable current/previous investments include plista (acquired by GroupM/WPP), Tradoria (acquired by Rakuten), LeanIX, Adjust and Mediakraft Networks.
- Iris Capital: A venture capital firm, sponsored by telecommunications giant Orange and marketing conglomerate Publicis Groupe, focused on investments in the digital economy. Notable current/previous investments include Mopub (acquired by Twitter), Human Inference (acquired by Neopost), Lookout, Talend and PlaceIQ.
- Michael Halbherr: Former CEO of Nokia HERE. Prior to spearheading HERE’s cloud-based location strategy, he oversaw the development of Nokia Maps and Internet services as Vice President of Ovi Products. He joined zeotap as a strategic advisor in June 2015.
- Steffen Roehn: Former CIO of Deutsche Telekom Group. Previously, he was CIO of T-Mobile International & Germany.
- Devin Guan: Co-Founder and CTO of Drawbridge. Previously, he was a founding member of AdMob’s optimization team (acquired by Google), and prior to that held various engineering leadership roles at prominent companies, including Yahoo. He was also responsible for conducting the Netflix Prize, a large-scale crowd-sourced machine learning contest.
- Peter Scheufen: Previously, he was CEO of Skobbler (acquired by Telenav), and prior to that founder of Navigon (acquired by Garmin).
Investors from previous rounds also participated.
“We’re simultaneously invigorated and humbled by the quality of investors we’ve attracted just a year into zeotap’s development. It’s a resounding vote of confidence in the overall value proposition and potential as well as our achievements to date,” said Daniel Heer, Co-Founder and CEO of zeotap.
“We’re excited to invest in zeotap and support their expansion. They’re well-poised to become the preeminent data platform in the mobile advertising ecosystem,” added Christian Siegele, Founder and Managing Partner of Capnamic Ventures.
A major initiative currently underway is the substantial growth of zeotap’s engineering team in Bangalore, India, led by Ameya Agnihotri, zeotap’s VP Engineering. Agnihotri has joined the company from mobile advertising platform Airpush where he was VP Technology. Previously, he oversaw the development of the supply-side platform (SSP) at marketing automation company PubMatic. zeotap is recruiting aggressively to engineering and product management roles in Bangalore which will serve as the company’s global technology centre.
“Ameya’s credentials speak for themselves; we’re incredibly excited to build our technical team with him at the helm. Moreover, Bangalore has a wealth of world-class talent and is best-positioned to feed our voracious needs,” said Projjol Banerjea, zeotap’s Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, who will move to Bangalore to oversee the company’s growing presence in India.
zeotap was launched in November 2014 by a team with extensive experience at Vodafone, IBM and Fyber (RNTS Media) as a data platform to connect MNOs with the app and advertising ecosystem. It is backed by the HitFox group and prominent angels including former executives at Deutsche Telekom, McKinsey, GfK and AOL.
