Kaltura Raises $20M In Nexus-Led Round

Online video platform provider Kaltura, Inc announced it has secured $20 million in a round led by Nexus Venture Partners. Nexus is a new investor and the round also saw Intel Capital and existing investors .406 Ventures, Avalon Ventures, and technology lender Silicon Valley Bank participating. Founded in 2006, Kaltura offers a self-hosted SaaS software platform that clients can download or commercially access. It also offers services such as streaming, hosting, transcoding, analytics, ad serving, support and maintenance packages, and professional development.

Kaltura enables customized video, photo and audio functionalities with rich-media integration, encoding, management, publishing, delivery, distribution, engagement, monetization, and analysis in websites and web-services. It also has a marketplace called Kaltura Exchange that showcases these applications with ancillary products and services that are offered by 3rd parties. The company competes with Brightcove.

Naren Gupta of Nexus Venture Partners, who also serves on the board of directors of open-source leader Red Hat, said, "Video is a powerful tool for enterprises and consumers and online video is rapidly being introduced into every website, web platform, and web service in the world. It is a fertile opportunity for a formidable success of an open-source leader like Kaltura." Nexus recently invested $12 million along with IndoUS Venture Partners in Indian daily deals site Snapdeal.com.

Based in New York, Kaltura has registered 100,000 publishers as clients. Fox, Paramount, HBO, Warner Brothers, Best Buy, Texas Instruments, Coldwell Banker, MIT, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, NYU, Columbia University, and Siemens are some of its clients. "Kaltura is disrupting the online video space in a similar way to how open-source Red Hat and MySQL have disrupted their fields of operating systems and databases," said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Chairman & CEO.

The company does not have an India base yet and has so far relied on the global distribution agreement with Samsung to draw Indian clients. Kaltura signed on Times of India as a client in mid-2010, Yekutiel told VCCircle.

Now, the company is in the process of evaluating distribution strategies - direct or via resellers - and the best way to expand into the Indian market. They are in discussions with some partners, he said, without disclosing any further information. Kaltura is also eying interesting potential acquisitions.

"Kaltura is a juggernaut. They're well positioned to deliver online video at a time in the market when demand for online video is exploding, "said Maria Cirino, Managing Director of .406 Ventures.

"There is significant demand to facilitate the handling of online video on three screens within customized work-flows in tightly integrated applications," said Lisa Lambert, vice president, Intel Capital. "Kaltura is optimally positioned to take full advantage of this opportunity with its open technology, impressive customer base, and strong developer community."