WooMe.mobi secures funding from 5ideas among others

Pearl Uppal-backed 5ideas Startupfuel has announced investment in WooMe.mobi, along with two other unnamed investors. WooMe is a mobile app for enabling interactivity on TV channels, music, movies, movie trailers, radio, multiplexes and advertising.

With its patented Audio Content Recognition (ACR) technology, WooMe.mobi listens and recognizes what a user is watching or listening and serves additional relevant content such as exclusive videos, pictures, news, trivia etc. to the user’s mobile screen. This allows brands to interact with their users in a contextual and meaningful manner using the mobile screen.

At present, the company has indexed over 30 million songs across genres, including Bollywood, Tamil, Telugu, English and other global music. As of now, it has enabled interactivity on around 25 TV channels, including music channels like 9XM, 9XO, Jalwa, ETC, and will scale to 100 TV Channels by end of this year.

WooMe.mobi is the brainchild of Rapheal brothers (Maxel & Sanju) who have previous experience with consumer media & technology. Maxel, after completing MBA from University of London, was working as an investment banker with Wall Street, while Sanju worked with Motorola Smart phone division for over two years.

“WooMe is revolutionizing how people consume and interact with mass media on a personal level, which is otherwise a traditional one-way communication. With our patent pending technology any TV channel, music, movie trailer or ad anywhere in the world can be activated with interactive content in less than 15 minutes. The advertisers can directly communicate to the consumers like pushing an exclusive deal, extended product video, more info or even conducting a poll as they watch the ad on TV, multiplex or even listening to radio,” says Maxel Raphael.

WooMe has exclusively partnered with SPORTZ Interactive, a STATS Global company, for engaging sports fans with engaging branded content. It also enabled interactive campaigns for several movies such as ‘Ragini MMS2’ where users who, sound tag the trailers and songs, were pushed with uncensored ‘behind the scene’ videos and exclusive stills from the movie.

The company is also integrating its technology with multiplexes across India for making pre-show trailers and commercials more interesting and engaging. Other developments include Interactive Music & Visual Radio with FM radio networks.

Speaking about the idea behind investment, Pearl Uppal from 5ideas Startup Superfuel, says, “India is fast becoming a mobile centric country. We tend to consume more content on our mobile screens than via conventional access points and that trend will continue to strengthen with larger screens, better bandwidth and more computing power. Woome is an innovative and relevant product at the forefront of that wave, helping Indian brands and entertainment powerhouses connect with their customers in a meaningful, contextual and relevant format.”