IMImobile revenue up 26 per cent in a year

Bouyant business in Europe and the Americas helped IMImobile to positive revenue and profit in the year to March 2016.

The company’s revenue rose 26 per cent to £61.6m, while gross profit rose by 22 per cent to £36.5m.

IMImobile’s chief executive Jay Patel said: “We have significantly grown our recurring revenue base and again achieved profitable cash generative growth, whilst continuing to invest in product development.

“We have also executed an acquisition in South Africa and delivered on our objective to roll out Textlocal, our previous acquisition, into new geographic markets.

“We will continue to invest in more sales and marketing activities and product development to establish a leading position in growth markets and we are confident of our prospects for the year ahead.”

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Digi.me raises £4.2m to push on with personal data quest

London-based Digi.me is one of the pioneering firms trying to put data back in the hands of consumers. Now’s it’s raised a major series A to support its mission.

The new fund means Digi.me has now raised £7.1m ($10.2m) since launching in 2009.

Digi.me could be described as a PIM (personal information management) company. It is building a ‘permissioned access platform’ that lets users bring share data such as health and financial information with businesses in exchange for personalised services, convenience or reward.

Digi.me founder and chairman Julian Ranger said: “This is a watershed moment for digi.me and this investment enables us to make the Internet of Me available to everyone, consumers and businesses alike.”

Digi.me’s app, which gathers pictures and posts from the major social media networks, already has over 400,000 users in 140 countries.

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Avast to acquire AVG for $1.3 billion

The anti-virus giants Avast and AVG are to merge in a cash and debt deal. Avast will pay $25 for AVG shares to make the buyout worth $1.3 billion – though it is still subject to shareholder approval.

Once completed the merged entity will have have responsibility for 400 million endpoints, including 160 million mobile devices. It will focus on new innovations in emerging markets, such as security for IoT devices.

Gary Kovacs, chief executive officer, AVG, said: “Our new scale will allow us to accelerate investments in growing markets and continue to focus on providing comprehensive and simple-to-use solutions for consumers and businesses alike.”

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Tencent/WeChat closes first-of-its-kind collaboration with global advertising group

Publicis Groupe, the huge European ad giant, is teaming up with WeChat to explore next-gen advertising ideas on the chat app.

The deal is built on three pillars:

• Future Capabilities: including running an incubator to cultivate the adtech start-ups of the future.
• Data: Tencent will offer access to behavioural data
• Content: The two companies will invest in web native content

The agreement was marked by Maurice Levy, CEO of Publicis Groupe, scanning of a WeChat QR code during a ceremony held at Viva Technology Paris. WeChat has 762 million users.

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Wirecard buys Citi Prepaid Card Services and prepares to enter the North American market

Germany’s Wirecard expects to add more than $20 million to its earnings after adding Citi Prepaid Card Services to its repertoire.

The German company already processes payments for 22,000 retailers and online merchants worldwide. Meanwhile Citi Prepaid Card Services had launched over 2,500 schemes for companies and brands, mostly in North America.

Markus Braun, CEO of Wirecard AG, said: “This acquisition extends Wirecard AG’s global presence into the North American market. On an operating level we look forward to sustainably enriching their existing product portfolio via our innovative issuing solutions.”

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User spend on Bango’s platform up 283 per cent in a year

UK carrier billing firm Bango has said in a trading update that user spend in six months tripled to £159m.

The growth was driven by app and content sales, and the increasing use of Bango Boost technology by existing Bango partners.

Bango opened multiple new routes for the app stores it services including European launches for Microsoft’s Windows Store and the first launch for Google Play Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) in India.

The company also expects the acquisition of the BilltoMobile carrier billing services to bring new revenue streams to the platform.

Bango CEO Ray Anderson said: “BilltoMobile added around $80m of end user spend in one step, together with new operator and merchant partnerships….We are excited to move to the next phase which involves providing BilltoMobile customers with access to Bango Boost technology, enabling them to grow their carrier billing sales more quickly.”

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Mahindra Comviva launches big data product for operators

Less subscriber churn and more revenue per user – that’s the promise of Mahindra Comviva’s new MobiLytix suite.

Operators can use MobiLytix to analyse customer data and find hidden revenue generating patterns. They can then tweak existing products or launch new ones to make more money and keep subscribers on the network.

The suite has multiple modules including: Campaign Management, Winback, Churn Prediction, Interactive Notifications, Next Best Offer, Subscriber & Retailer Loyalty Solution, IRIS (Incremental Revenues through Incremental Sales) and Digital Care.

It can support 20,000 transactions per second across more than 600 campaigns simultaneously.

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