Cloud publishing platform GENWI raises $4 million Series A round from Nexus Ventures

GENWI (pronounced “Gen Y”), a cloud publishing platform for smartphones and tablets, has raised $4 million in Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners. GENWI was founded in 2010 by Bangalore-bred entrepreneur Prabhanjan Gurumohan and is based out of Los Altos, California.  GENWI had raised $1.1 million as seed capital in 2010 from Inventus Capital Partners and Quest Venture Partners.  These investors have also participated in the Series A round along with Nexus, thereby taking GENWI’s lifetime funding to $5.1 million.GENWI's cloud publishing platform enables rapid design, deployment, and management of visually stunning HTML5 or native apps (iOS and Android), with no native device OS programming while incorporating rich media capabilities and real-time data. The solution also provides comprehensive real-time analytics which give insights into app usage and engagement, along with various revenue-generating capabilities for businesses like ads, coupons, in-app subscriptions, etc.

The GENWI cloud publishing suite offers a mobile-optimized content aggregation and management system (mCMS^TM), a custom interface layout engine, smart content curation based on analytics, social and ad networks integration, and app distribution from the cloud, thereby allowing content publishers from long-tail bloggers to mainstream magazines and mobile marketers to build their entire mobile strategy on the GENWI cloud platform as opposed to creating individual solutions for various devices using multiple service providers.

The platform is currently being harnessed by over 34000 publishers and has enabled over 1500 live apps across platforms. GENWI claims to have analyzed, aggregated and delivered over 60 million posts and 80 million images so far. The company’s client list includes names like Forbes, Cox Media, Vans Shoes, PBS Arizona, Newser, Schruz Communications, TNA Wrestling and The Stanford Daily, among others.

“From growing up in a less than 150 square foot home in Guttahalli in Bangalore to doing a Ph.D and starting my own company which democratizes app creation and delivery, it’s been an amazing journey. With this round of funding, we intend to strengthen infrastructure and harness Nexus’ expertise to expand to key mobility markets like India and South East Asia. I was raised and educated here in India and I’m confident that our product, which enables launching of apps remarkably fast without coding, is ideal for the Indian market with its low total cost of ownership,” said Prabhanjan Gurumohan, the founder and CEO of GENWI.For Nexus Venture Partners, this deal follows two blockbuster exits in the cloud space. Cloud.com, a company that they had invested in,was recently acquired by Citrix for over $200 million.  This was followed by Red Hat acquiring Gluster, another Nexus investee in the cloud computing domain. Speaking about their investment in GENWI, Jishnu Bhattacharjee of Nexus said, “GENWI is very attractively poised at the intersection of cloud and mobility. Riding on the wave of newer modes of media consumption, it allows for the creation for great user experiences and opens up so many possibilities to content publishers and retailers in terms of delivering rich, dynamic content and integrating it with purchase.” Jishnu will be joining GENWI’s board of directors.

To know more about GENWI, check out www.genwi.com

Sriram Mohan | YourStory.in | Bangalore| 12^th October 2011