Amadeus Leads Investment in Celltick
March 7, 2005
Amadeus Capital Partners Limited has led an $11 million Series C equity financing in Celltick Technologies, the market leader in idle screen services and interactive mobile broadcast that is expanding its global activity. Existing investor, JVP (Jerusalem Venture Partners), also made a substantial new investment in the round.
Founded in 2000, Celltick is headquartered in London, has its R&D operations in Israel and offices in China, India and Russia. The company's platform allows mobile operators to broadcast interactive content directly to the idle screen of millions of subscribers, providing a powerful tool to drive usage of value-added services. In Winter 2003, Celltick deployed its first commercial system, in Hutchison India, and has subsequently won a number of contracts with operators worldwide.
Celltick has developed a compelling solution to a problem shared by all mobile operators: the slow adoption rate of data services. As revenue from voice services is reaching a plateau, most operators have set themselves ambitious revenue targets from data services. The global market for value-added data services is predicted to grow to $48 billion by 2007 but this will only materialise when the mass market adopts data services. With Celltick's platform, operators gain a cost-efficient tool to promote their data products, while mobile users can enjoy valuable content on their handset screens and can access services in a simple and intuitive interface.
LiveScreen, Celltick's main product, displays silent and non-intrusive messages on mobile handsets while they are in idle mode. These can be news headlines, sport reports, traffic updates, multi-user games and more. When users see a message that interests them, all they have to do is click a single button; a menu opens and presents various data services related to the message (these can be anything the operator offers - SMS and MMS services, WAP sessions, Voice calls, etc.); a second click launches the desired service. In addition, the system is uniquely able to reach the entire subscriber base instantly, making it a genuine mass market offering.
Celltick's commercial deployment has validated the system's ability to drive data services adoption, with 25%-32% of LiveScreen-enabled users becoming regular consumers of data services (compared with 2%-5% before deployment).
Celltick is led by Yossi Wellingstein as CEO and Jeff Gordon as Chairman. Mr Wellingstein, a co-founder of Celltick, has a strong track record in the telecoms industry and was one of the founding executives of Barak, an international long-distance carrier based in Israel. Mr Gordon was previously a Vice President of Motorola and has held senior positions in Unisys.
Commenting on the investment, Amadeus Director Richard Anton, who joins Celltick's Board, says: "We believe that Celltick has created an end-to-end solution that will finally succeed in creating mass adoption of mobile value-added data services. Celltick enjoys first mover advantage in interactive mobile broadcasting; its product is the only commercial, tested and deployed offering in the market, complete with content aggregation, delivery, network interface and client handling. Celltick's team is impressive and we are delighted to be supporting the company in its next stage of growth."
Laurel Bowden, a General Partner in JVP, said that the company had made impressive progress over the past year. "The demand for services is rapidly growing in the mobile industry, and Celltick is perfectly poised to capitalise with its interactive broadcast solution. We have high expectations for Celltick and full confidence in the strength of its management to continue leading the innovation of data services on a global scale."
Yossi Wellingstein, Celltick's CEO, added: "We are delighted to have Amadeus on board. The combined experience and expertise of Amadeus and JVP will be instrumental in expanding Celltick's activities and strengthening our market impact. Celltick's technology has already delivered remarkable results to operators across the world, and with our investors' support we will realise the potential of idle screen services to become a key element in operators' mobile data strategies."
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© 2005 Amadeus Capital Partners Limited