Helion Venture Partners portfolio companies Komli Media and Jivox have entered into a strategic partnership that will see Komli become an exclusive partner for Jivox’s interactive video platform in the Asia Pacific region for video advertising. The Mumbai-based ad network will acquire Jivox’s related assets including existing publisher and customer relationships in India as part of the partnership, said a press release. Jivox will support Komli as a platform licensee and strategic partner and gain a presence in markets such as Australia, South East Asia, Middle East and Africa.
The partnership empowers Komli to exclusively use the Jivox platform for running online interactive video ads for its advertisers and agency partners across all platforms including online, mobile and all tablet devices. The global online video advertising market is estimated to cross the US$3 billion revenue mark this year, said the press release.
San Mateo, California-based Jivox, which also has offices in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai, was founded in 2008 by US-based serial entrepreneur Diaz Nesamoney. The company raised a $2.7 million seed round of funding from Opus Capital in 2008 followed by a $10.7 million Series A round from Opus and Helion. In June last year, it reportedly raised another $4 million from the two investors in a Series B round. The company counts brands such as Microsoft, Nokia, General Motors and Google among its customers.
Komli, which has raised over $28 million in venture capital so far from Helion, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Nexus Venture Partners and Norwest Venture Partners, has been on an aggressive mergers and acquisitions led growth spree. In July it wrapped up its fourth acquisition with ZestAdz, a mobile ad platform based in Chennai. Its earlier acquisitions include Singapore-based Aktiv Digital, UK-based Indoor Media and Sydney-based PostClick. Founded in 2006 by Akshay Garg and Amar Goel, the company claims to have more than 20,000 publishers on board and is rapidly scaling up to emerge as a dominant Asia Pacific ad network.
Images Courtesy: Komli Media & Jivox
