Big Bang Ventures invests in Mobiluck

Seed funding

Early-stage investor Big Bang Ventures of Belgium said it has invested an undisclosed amount of seeding funding in Mobiluck SA, a provider of mobile phone services. The investment will help the Paris-based company to launch its mobile networking service.

Mobiluck develops and operates mobile interactive services, leveraging the convergence of mobile, social communities and location-based services. The company’s approach to pin-pointing the location of people and places will connect of users in the same way as a personalised, virtual mobile radar would do.

The company plans to use the proceeds of this round to launch the service, expand the product development organisation and prepare the company for a first round funding during the second half of 2007.

Barend Van den Brande of Big Bang Ventures will join Olivier Chouraki, CEO, and Laurent Samama, former head of Nokia France, on the board of directors.

Olivier Chouraki, CEO Mobiluck, said, “We are proud to have Big Bang Ventures join us in our effort to launch an exciting new service, which will free us from the limitations of the current Bluetooth-based offering. Together, we are looking forward to lock down several new milestones for the company over the summer.”

Barend Van den Brande, Managing Partner Big Bang Ventures said, “Social networking is here to stay. When we were looking for the next frontier in locating and connecting people and places, we discovered that Mobiluck’s service is quickly emerging as a leader in its field with over one million downloads to date. We expect the dawn of a whole new era for mobile users, combining Mobiluck’s service with the advent of low, flat rate mobile data plans”.

Mobiluck’s location-based mobile social networking service, Geo-location, gives the real-time location of friends, business contacts and fellow users. Users can communicate using instant messaging or voice, identify their location, tag, share and rate their favourite locations, search for nearby people and places.

Mobiluck was created in 2003 by Chouraki, launching first as a mobile application using Bluetooth technology. Mobiluck is available for over 120 models of mobile phones, in 21 languages. With no marketing budget to support its viral growth, Mobiluck claims to be one of the most popular mobile applications in the world, with more than 1 million downloads and 500,000 registered users from 200 countries.