TechWatch: Gemini Israel Fund follows Optier success with Adap.tv

Adap.tv is the creator of OneSource, the first platform to help publishers fully monetize their on-line video content.

By MATT KRIEGER
Tech Watch 88 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Tech Watch 88
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Following last week's announcement from Israel- and New York-based Optier, the leader in business-transaction management, which announced that it had raised $47.5 million in funding from new investors Index Ventures and Morgan Stanley, and existing investors Pitango Venture Capital, Carmel Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Gemini Israel Funds and strategic partner Cisco, as well as secured a $15m. credit line with Plenus Venture Lending, this week's TechWatch starts out with some more capital-raising news. ADAP.TV, creators of OneSource, the first platform to help publishers fully monetize their on-line video content, last week announced that it has secured $13m. in Series B ventures funding. Led by Spark Capital, the Series B round also includes existing investors Redpoint Ventures and Gemini Israel Fund. As part of the investment, Spark Capital general partner Dennis Miller will join the Adap.tv board of directors. Adap.tv will use the financing to accelerate the development of its flagship offering Adap.tv OneSource and its adoption by video publishers and on-line ad networks. The opportunity for on-line video advertising is significant. According to eMarketer, nearly 67 percent of US Internet users viewed on-line video ads at least once a month in 2008 and 129.5 million people will watch on-line video ads this year. By 2013, an estimated 183 million people in the US will watch on-line videos. Following a $10m. Series A round led by Redpoint Ventures and Gemini Israel Funds in July 2007, this investment makes Adap.tv one of the best capitalized companies in the video-advertising space. Since Adap.tv launched OneSource in April, it has signed partnerships with leading video Web sites, including BitTorrent, Metacafe, DemandMedia, blip.tv and nearly 300 others. With Adap.tv as the latest portfolio addition, Spark Capital focuses on the conflux of the media, entertainment and technology industries, with current investments including Twitter, Veoh Networks and EQAL. CONFIDELA INC., an Enterprise 2.0 company based in Israel, last month announced the completion of its $5m. second round of financing led by Gemini Israel Funds and CheckPoint co-founder and Imperva CEO Shlomo Kramer, who was Confidela's seed investor. Confidela, which is currently operating in stealth mode, is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that was founded in 2007 by a group of entrepreneurs led by Noam Livnat. Livnat is a graduate of an IDF elite technological unit (8200). He was a senior product manager at Cyota, and led its layered authentication products until its acquisition by RSA. Livnat was joined recently by EMC's Moti Rafalin, who came on board as co-founder and CEO. At EMC, Rafalin led the acquisition of nLayers, a Gemini portfolio company. Rafalin is a graduate of the Harvard Business School. The team was also joined by Yuval Yaeger, VP R&D, who is a graduate of Mamram and 8200, and who until recently led the development of one of CA's leading security products. ISRAEL DISCOUNT Bank and the multinational company Infosys Technologies Ltd. earlier this month announced that Israel Discount Bank (IDB), the third-largest bank in Israel, has selected Finacle e-banking solution. Finacle e-banking will enable the bank to leverage Internet and mobile channels toward accelerating the growth of its corporate/SME and retail banking business. IDB's new business strategy to leapfrog competition in the e-banking arena triggered the modernization of its technology platform. The bank planned to use the e-banking platform to launch innovative products and to provide enhanced customer service through the Internet and mobile channels. Toward this end, the bank needed faster time-to-market for launching new features and products for its SME and retail banking operations, previously managed on software applications developed in-house. Infosys shall be partnering with Israeli technology services firm Taldor for implementation of the e-banking platform. Taldor, the local business-alliance partner of Finacle and one of the leading providers of technology services in Israel, has been contracted by IDB as the prime contractor for the implementation of this project. AXIGEN, a leading messaging solution provided by Gecad Technologies and Netanya-based Commtouch, a provider of e-mail and web security technology, on Thursday announced the signing of a licensing agreement aimed at launching an integrated product combining AXIGEN Mail Server's carrier-class messaging with Commtouch's advanced e-mail defense features. The new bundled AXIGEN-Commtouch product will integrate the Commtouch Recurrent Pattern Detection technology into the AXIGEN Mail Server. Recognized as achieving superior detection/accuracy performance, RPD is focused on the most fundamental characteristic of spam and e-mail-borne malware and phishing, namely their mass distribution over the Internet. The Commtouch SDK embedded in AXIGEN's messaging solutions will work through a real-time connection to Commtouch's Global Detection Centers, which analyze large volumes of Internet traffic and identify new spam, virus and phishing outbreaks based on mass distribution patterns. As a result, emerging outbreaks are identified moments after they are introduced into the Internet. mattkrieger@gmail.com