Thursday, October 9, 2014

Swedish newcomer receives 430 million in venture capital – “we will become as big as … – Business Week

In the latest round of funding they received 430 million. One of the new owners is Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom who sees potential in the Swedish technology company.

One of Sweden’s hottest newcomer, technology company TrueCaller , now receives over 430 million in venture capital, writes Di One of the new owners is Skype founder Niklas Zennström.

Risk capitalists Kleiner Perkins Caufield & amp; Byers is one of the companies that have invested in Truecallers latest financing round. For them, it took only an hour to decide. Founders of TrueCaller, Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam, were pleasantly surprised by the decision went so fast in Silicon Valley. “It is not just the experience you have of Swedish venture capital company,” said Mamedi to Di.

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That decision did not take long, however, is not unexpected. TrueCaller impress everyone. Every day loads of 200 000 people downloaded their app, which is described as the world’s largest telephone directory, but over a billion unique numbers. Growth has doubled in one year and the founders continue to see potentil grow. “We have 85 million users today, and the plan is to have half a billion users by the end of next year. With the growth we have now, I am confident that we will reach that goal, “said Mamedi.

Before: Swedish app gets 100,000 new customers – every day

The revenue side has not caught up yet. In 2013, sales increased by only 6.4 million, and the company showed a loss after financial items of 17.1 million. But this is nothing that makes the founders or investors worried. “Our focus is to continue to invest in product and technology needed to create the world’s largest search engine for paging. We have of course a well-developed long-term plan to become profitable, “said Mamedi to Di, pointing to the fact that today is 1.5 billion searches in the app per month. “The various forms of search, we have a good opportunity to build a sustainable business model.”

One of the new owners is Niklas Zennström’s venture capital firm Atomico. Zennström, who founded Skype, will also act as advisors to Truecallers Board of Directors. “It’s great to see a team from Sweden redefining how we communicate and the scales its technology globally,” said Zennstrom in a comment. Mamedi sees commonalities with Skype. “Skype is like TrueCaller though it’s a different type of product. Our construction will be as large as Skype but in our niche. goal is to TrueCaller to have an equal importance as Skype have today in telephony, “he said about the future.

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Truecallers old owner of Sequoia, business angel Jerry Murdock and company chairman Stefan Lennhammer have also chosen to invest further in the latest round of funding. Funding is vital. “We are a very heavy engineering company and we are doing right now investing heavily in our product, platform and talented people, “said Mamedi.

After the round may also TrueCaller three new board members. The owner and the business angel Jerry Murdock takes place on the board together with Mattias Ljungman from Atomico and John Doerr sits on Google’s board. The fact that Google might be interested in TrueCaller has talked about before, and now brought the issue back to life. To a question about the connection to Google responds Mamedi that “you can interpret it in a positive way that we have a good friend on the other side. But in this world occurs people extremely professionally and keep apart their mission.” Di then asks how TrueCaller would react to a bid from Google. “I have not even thought about it,” said Mamedi.

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