Israeli start-up Pudding Media Inc. has closed its first internal financing round, raising $8 million from BRM Capital, and Opus Capital, which provided the company with seed capital.
Pudding was founded in 2005 by Ariel and Reuben Maislos. Ariel Maislos was formerly a founder of Passave, which was acquired by PMC-Sierra Inc. (Nasdaq: PMCS) for $350 million. He is also active as angel with investments in Anobit Technologies Ltd., and VisionMap Ltd..
Pudding has developed a smart speech identification system enabling the provision of customized advertising content to users over telephony services. The company has raised $350,000 to date.
Reuben Maislos said, "The funding we have just raised will help us accelerate the penetration of our niche markets. Pudding is targeting the cellular market and, in effect, any telecommunications that has an element of sound. We see an opportunity to improve profitability for all voice providers by using effective targeted advertising to monetize all forms of voice communication, without compromising privacy. Our solution will reduce costs to users on the one hand, and increase revenue for providers on the other. At present, voice services are funded entirely by users, and service providers' bottom lines are being eroded."
Globes: Does this mean you'll listen in on our phone calls and then offer us advertising tailored accordingly? Sounds frightening?
Reuben Maislos: "This is a system that monitors calls following which the information is deleted, and that means completely, rather than being stored as search history, like on the Internet. We monetize all types of voice communications and enable providers to run smart advertising systems."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on January 6, 2008
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2008