Thumbplay Snags $18m, Plans International Expansion
24 March 2008Online mobile entertainment content retailer Thumbplay is looking to accelerate its growth plans and expand internationally in 2008 now that it’s raised $18 million in Series E funding.
The New York City-headquartered startup offers 80,000 pieces of mobile content including ringtones, wallpapers, games, videos, voice tones and text-based services.
With enough money in the kitty, Thumbplay executives are also considering acquisition to ramp up the company’s growth.
“Thumbplay’s unique off-deck model for selling a wide variety of mobile entertainment content to consumers has already proven to be very successful here in the US and we’re now ready to extend the positive customer experience we already deliver to the millions of mobile consumers all around the world,” said Thumbplay founder and CEO Are Traasdahl.
The Series E funding will also help Thumbplay to expand its direct-to-consumer product offerings and further develop the tools it provides content owners, creators, publishers and brand marketers.
Brookside Capital Partners, the public equity affiliate of Bain Capital, and Cross Creek Capital, a private equity affiliate of Wasatch Advisors, led the Series E round.
Thumbplay has been on a tear lately. In Q4 of 2007, the company announced deals to integrate its mobile entertainment content catalog into the Web and mobile portals of AOL and MSN Mobile, as well as social music discovery service iLike.
Thumbplay also inked a digital distribution deal to add content from Sony BMG Music Entertainment’s artists to Thumbplay’s mobile entertainment content catalog. The deal with Sony BMG added more than 7,000 pieces of content to Thumbplay’s mobile entertainment catalog.
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