Air2Web announces $25 Million financing led by Carlyle Group

Wednesday, 27 September 2006, 19:30 IST
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Atlanta: Air2Web, a provider of mobile messaging and marketing applications, today announced it has completed a $25 million round of new financing led by The Carlyle Group with participation from its existing investors. With these funds, the company plans to strengthen its leadership position as the world’s first full-service mobile marketing solutions provider, expand its global footprint and continue to enhance its portfolio of mobile marketing services. Air2Web provides a unified platform that enables marketers, ad agencies, broadcasters, enterprises and carriers to create, deploy and manage mobile marketing campaigns, including advanced multimedia and premium text messaging, alerts, and mobile content delivery, all with carrier-grade reliability. Offering a robust portfolio of services to companies bringing their brands mobile, Air2Web is trusted by a number of notable customers including American Express, Cingular, Citibank, SpikeTV, The Weather Channel, and UPS. The company boasts live deployments across the world of mobile solutions including campaign management, mobile couponing, mobile branding and brand presence, interactive polling, games, trivia, news alerts and notifications, secure instant messaging, wireless customer relationship management, group messaging and global content distribution. "According to our data, Air2Web is well-positioned as a provider of full-services, message-based mobile marketing solutions to marketers, TV studios, advertisers and carriers. Text messaging has become a mainstream application, as 70.9 million Americans reported using SMS in July, with 8.9 percent of mobile subscribers reporting they participated in a TV or radio poll," said Will Hodgman, CEO and president, M.Metrics. "The company’s global footprint will serve Air2Web well in exploiting the many opportunities in mobile marketing around the world," he said. The financing was led by The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms with more than $44.3 billion under management and a diverse set of assets in relevant sectors including telecommunications, media and consumer brands. As part of the financing, Jay Koh of Carlyle will join Air2Web’s Board of Directors. “The market for mobile marketing products and services is taking off quickly. We looked extensively for the best platform company to back in a rapidly growing and maturing market, and selected Air2Web as the early market leader with a strong management team, carrier proven technology and a successful track record of executing volume campaigns for leading global advertisers and brand marketers,” said Jay Koh, Principal of The Carlyle Group. "This new investment will help us leverage our strengths to consolidate our position as a leader in the mobile marketing space,” said Sanjoy Malik, President and CEO of Air2Web.
Source: IANS