Mobiles Republic Closes USD $3 Million Series A Funding Round

BORDEAUX, France and NEW YORK, March 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobiles Republic, a leading publisher of applications for smartphones, tablets, TV and PCs, including Windows 8 devices, announced today that it has closed a USD three million Round A investment from venture capitalist firms XAnge Private Equity and Creathor Ventures. The company will use the investment to continue the global expansion of its popular news apps, including News Republic, APPY Geek and Glam Life, on the different platforms.

"With this investment, we will be able to accelerate our growth, continue to federate more publishers on top of the 300 that have joined us, and continue our expansion capitalizing on our multilingual semantic engine," said Gilles Raymond, CEO, Mobiles Republic. "We are very pleased to have the support of XAnge Private Equity and Creathor Venture, who believe in our mission to be the worldwide leader in personal media apps on the four screens."

Through content partnerships with major news providers, Mobiles Republic's apps deliver thousands of news articles a day, but allow users to filter this mass of information down to the exact stories that interest them. The apps are widely popular in the U.S. and in Europe, with News Republic, APPY Geek and Glam Life all claiming Top positions in the Android Market upon launch.

"With 100M Pages Views per month threshold achieved in only 12 months, we are impressed by Mobiles Republic's rapid expansion in Europe and the U.S. based on major content partnerships, unique expertise in monetization and amazing real usage per unique visitor. On top of their semantic engine, the granular personalization options represent a major differentiating factor in the market," said Cyril Bertrand, Partner at XAnge Private Equity. "The news app sector has been garnering a great deal of attention, and Mobiles Republic, with an extremely efficient four screens strategy, has been well positioned as market leader since 2009 through its relationships with manufacturers – OS providers and publishers, as well as the ability to monetize. We are proud to accompany Mobiles Republic as lead investor right from the very beginning," adds Dr. Gert Kohler, Founder and CEO of Creathor Venture.   

About Mobiles Republic

Founded in 2008, Mobiles Republic quickly established a reputation for innovation and excellence in developing successful apps for the smartphone market as well as award winning apps for feature phones including the prestigious Sony Ericsson Content Award. Mobiles Republic has developed TagNav©, a semantic search and semantic targeting solution that powers its News Republic, APPY Geek, Biz Report and Glam Life applications. The company has expanded rapidly and has established strong relationships with more than 300 leading publishers, global media brands and handset manufacturers.  Mobiles Republic applications are preloaded on Samsung Mobile, Lenovo, Motorola and Sony Ericsson handsets in several regions. You can follow News Republic on Facebook and Twitter.

About XAnge

XAnge Private Equity, a subsidiary of La Banque Postale, is a portfolio management company licensed by the French financial markets authority AMF to operate in private equity.
It manages or advises:
- an original multi-corporate sector-based division that invests in innovation in the area of digital exchange through the venture capital firm XAnge Capital and the XAnge Capital 2 venture capital fund. With total assets under management of more than EUR110 million, its investor base consists of industrial and service-sector businesses linked to the La Poste group (through La Poste SA and Banque Postale) together with Alten, its technology partner, Deloitte and Neopost, and various institutional investors, including in particular Allianz France, CDC and CNP Assurances.
- a growth/buy-out capital division through the XPansion fund (EUR50 million), and
- eleven innovation funds and a general purpose investment fund representing assets under management totalling EUR160 million and the private equity sub-fund of the Actys 2 fund of funds entrusted to it by La Banque Postale Asset Management.
XAnge also has a direct innovation investment activity in Germany, based in Munich, and advises DVC (Deutsche Bank group) for the management of its technology portfolio.
XAnge builds local relations with regional companies in the South-East of France through its dedicated office in Lyon.
Assets under management or advised by XAnge Private Equity totalled EUR375 million at the end of 2011.

About Creathor Venture

CREATHOR VENTURE manages funds of over 150 M Euro in total and invests in technology-oriented companies and entrepreneurs from the area of IT, telecommunication, media, new materials, nanotechnology, clean tech and life science. The management team at Creathor Venture includes the founder of former Technologieholding, Dr. Gert Kohler, as well as Ingo Franz and Karlheinz Schmelig. With 25 years of experience in the venture capital market, Creathor has been acting as lead investor for more than 200 companies, participating in over 20 IPOs and numerous trade sales. In the past, Creathor has achieved fund returns significantly above average.

Investors of the current fund Creathor Venture II include the ERP-EIF Dachfonds and the European Union through which the Fund receives funding, originating Multiannual programme for enterprise and entrepreneurship (MAP), fund-of-funds, family offices, entrepreneurs as well as Creathor's team.

SOURCE Mobiles Republic