Cleeng Raises $1.2 Million to Accelerate U.S. Growth
Cleeng raised $1,200,000 in a Series A round led by Pascal Cagni (Former General Manager and Vice President Apple EMEIA 2000-2012) bringing Cleeng’s total venture funding to $1.7 million to date.
New York, NY(12 May 2015)
Cleeng, the specialist in video e-commerce for leading sports and entertainment companies, announced today it has raised €1,100,000 (USD $1.2 million) in a Series A round led by Pascal Cagni (General Manager and Vice President Apple EMEIA 2000-2012), bringing Cleeng's total venture funding to €1.5 million (USD $1.7 million) to date. The funding round will support Cleeng's heavily demanded international growth and further product development for the disruptive video e-commerce platform.
Cleeng's growing customer demand and successful platform disruption of the Live Pay-Per-View market for thousands of clients including FIFA/Sportmax TV, Dailymotion, and Cirque du Soleil drive the additional capitalization. The Amsterdam-based start up, ranked #2 dutch fastest growing in the European Tech5 by in 2014*, has recorded more than 500,000 user accounts in 172 countries and had a 2.5x year-on-year Q1 revenue. Further, leading Online Video Platforms (OVPs) like Brightcove, Livestream, Ustream, Kaltura, Globecast, JWPlayer and Ooyala have selected Cleeng to provide the most powerful, efficient, and fast to deploy video e-commerce solution available.
Building on this momentum, Cleeng will leverage the Series A round to accelerate the company’s international growth, principally in the US, while scaling the platform's technology, which currently handles hundreds of thousands of transactions per hour, to meet increasing demand.
Gilles Domartini, founder and CEO of Cleeng, remarked: “After a successful pivot toward video e-commerce, this investment will give us the means to solidify our market leadership. We have attracted and retained top clients, and leading video platforms now recommend Cleeng for their PPV & VOD projects. With more than 1/2 of our business in the US, it is time to accelerate our sales development and unleash our revenue potential internationally. We are thrilled by the trust shown by our investors and we will remain focused on delivering the ambitious scaling plan.”
Lead investor Pascal Cagni added: “The explosive growth of audiences watching videos online is opening a real opportunity to monetize quality content. Cleeng has developed a proven and robust technology, successfully monetizing thousands of live events and videos, like the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight 10 days ago and a great leadership team. We are pleased to support their international growth and continued expansion.”
Looking forward, Cleeng's priorities include ramping up its presence in the US, where the service is already experiencing heavy and growing demand, while building the platform's infrastructure to handle an unprecedented number of hourly live pay-per-view sales per hour. With a growing user base, satisfied clients, and a thriving partner network, Cleeng is well positioned to continue to lead video e-commerce and disrupt existing solutions.
About Cleeng
Cleeng, the leading video e-commerce platform, safeguards LIVE concerts, sporting events, conferences for leading brands and celebrities including FIFA, Cirque du Soleil, TEDMED, Dailymotion and partners with all major OVPs. Cleeng has mastered all the challenges associated with selling videos on all devices and supports a wide variety of business models (Live events, VOD, subscriptions, registration wall) and collect payments in more than 170 countries. Founded in 2011 by eCommerce experts, Cleeng is currently headquartered in Amsterdam, and has satellite offices in the USA, France and Poland.
About Pascal Cagni
Pascal Cagni is non-executive Director at Kingfisher and Vivendi, and GM and VP Apple Europe (2000-2012).
With his talented team, he is an active investor in the domains of future of hardware and future of e-commerce. He frequently supports start-ups and contributes to their international deployment.
* Fastest growing Dutch startups 2014: http://thenextweb.com/voice/2014/04/11/fastest-growing-companies-europe-found/3/