New private angels join existing investors in a seed-round, fueling the independent app store revolution Appland is bringing to vertical consumer-facing organizations such as brands, B2C enterprises, e-tailers, mobile operators and handset manufacturers.
GOTHENBURG, Sweden – May 28, 2014) – Appland AB, the pioneer in white-labeled cloud-based app store management systems, today announced it has raised $1.1M in a seed funding round from new private angel investors together with existing investors.
The funds will be used to increase Appland’s sales and marketing efforts as well as facilitate more aggressive growth. There is increasing global demand from all forms of consumer-facing businesses for their own verticalized and branded cross-platform app-stores, to complement the first generation “one-size-fits-all” app marketplaces such as the Apple App Store and Google Play.
“Enterprises ranging from consumer brands to leading e-tailers have woken up to the opportunity of having their own app stores selling virtual goods such as apps, games and e-books to their customer bases to leverage their existing business relationships. It not only drives a new source of revenue but also strengthens loyalty and brand awareness on their customers’ smart-phones,” says Jonatan Redvik, CEO and Founder of Appland. “This round of funding allows us expand our reach to prospective app-store owners and service our growing global customer base, helping them to launch their own branded store within days with more than 100,000 certified apps across a variety of operating systems and languages.”
With its white label app store management solution, Appland allows any organization to painlessly launch their own branded app store within days, providing mobile-billing, customer relationship infrastructure and content relevant to all Android versions, iOS and other multi-platform mobile operating systems.
Appland expects to continue its exponential growth, since its inception in 2011, on the back of the global app market that Gartner forecasts will triple in revenue from $26bn in 2013 to $77bn in 2017 [1] . Gartner also expects 25% of enterprises to have their own branded app store by 2017 [2] , driving the evolution of vertical app markets for enterprises and consumer brands.
With this new funding, Appland has raised a total of approximately $2M to date, and is now poised to grow its capability to execute further growth with plans to complete a Series A-funding round during the course of 2015.
About Appland
Appland provides the next generation cross-platform white-label app stores to vertical-facing organizations including retail brands, e-tailers, enterprises, as well as mobile network operators and OEMs. The solution is delivered as a SaaS cloud based platform, empowering any business to open their own vertically branded app store within days, with a flexible, scalable and customized ecosystem of applications to generate new revenue streams. Appland offers a fully managed app store service including over 100,000 apps, subscription clubs, content monetization, carrier billing, ad sales, virtual money, social media campaigns and all customer acquisition & retention operations.
For more information please visit: www.applandinc.com
Elevera Advisers acted as Appland’s exclusive corporate advisers in this fundraising transaction.
[1] Forecast: Mobile App Stores, Worldwide, 2013 Update September 5, 2013 https://www.gartner.com/doc/2584918/forecast-mobile-app-stores-worldwide
[2] Gartner Says That by 2017, 25 Percent of Enterprises Will Have an Enterprise App Store: February 12, 2013 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2334015
