Singapore-based U2opia Mobile, fresh from a Series A round of funding (amount undisclosed) from Matrix Partners India, is looking to scale up India as its single largest market, even as it explores South East Asia and Africa. The company, founded last year by former Bubble Motion executives Sumesh Menon and Ankit Nautiyal, has a large portion of its development team working out of Gurgaon, Haryana, and expects to scale up this presence significantly in the next two quarters. Singapore functions as the company’s business development headquarters.
U2opia builds social applications to enable the growth, engagement and monetization of social networks on mobile. It currently has three products — Fonedoo, Fonetwish and Fonebuy. Fonedoo helps users discover content for their mobile on the web through their social network. Fonetwish helps users access any favourite social network on any phone without requiring an active GPRS or 3G connection of their phone. Fonebuy looks at opportunities in micro-transactions for virtual goods. “It is clear that the world of the Internet and mobile are on a collision course to merge. However the way these industries approach business are very different. U2opia was formed as an attempt to help bridge these two worlds,” says co-founder and CEO Menon.
The company is also collaborating with social networking giant Facebook, which was looking at new ways to reach its audience and liked the Fonetwish product. “We met with Facebook at their Palo Alto headquarters in January this year and shared the first sketches of how Fonetwish would work,” says Menon. The U2opia team ended up with Facebook and other partners, including Airtel (the first telecom operator to launch Fonetwish) to bring the product to market.
The funding raised from Matrix is the company’s first institutional round of capital. It was angel funded by a group of technopreneurs. The fresh funds will be used to hire senior talent, build the engineering team for product development and expand its team to address global demand. The company currently employs 20 people and its target markets include India, Indonesia, Philippines and Africa. Menon claims that the company is currently generating cash from its operations. Its main revenue source is telecom operators.
Connect with U2opia at Facebook and Linkedin.
