Nexus Ventures-backed Kaltura raises $47M from SAP Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners, others

Open Office-based online video platform Kaltura Inc has raised $47 million, led by new investors such as SAP Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners, Commonfund Capital, and Brazil-based Gera Ventures. The round also saw participation from existing investors, including 406 Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Mitsui & Co Global Investment and Silicon Valley Bank.

The capital will be used to further accelerate product development and expand operations to Brazil, Mexico, China, Japan, Australia, Singapore and Korea.

"Following our success in North America and Europe, we started addressing Asia Pacific and Latin America and were met by good demand. We will continue to grow our operations in all four regions this year, as well as further accelerate our product development," said Kaltura chairman and CEO Ron Yekutiel.

In November 2012, the company had raised $25 million in Series D from Mitsui Global Investment and Orix Ventures, with participation from existing investors Intel Capital, 406 Ventures, Avalon Ventures and India-based Nexus Venture Partners. This was followed by a $20 million funding round led by Nexus Venture Partners and Silicon Valley Bank.

Founded in 2007, Kaltura offers free open source platforms that allow enterprises to manage, distribute, publish, engage, monetise and analyse video content. Its video solutions and products include a standalone video management console, a private YouTube-like video portal and online-video plug-ins for popular content management systems such as SharePoint, Blackboard, Moodle, etc.  Its customers can deploy the platforms on Kaltura's own SaaS cloud and are supported on PCs, tablets, smartphones, set-top-boxes and connected devices.

The company is now planning to launch advanced live, OTT, analytics, and monetisation solutions for media companies and service providers; webcasting capabilities for enterprises; and lecture capture capabilities for educational institutions.

Kaltura claims that its platforms are used by more than 300,000 organisations, including Wikipedia, HBO, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Accenture, Bank of America, AstraZeneca, Groupon and NASA.

In an interview with Techcircle.in last November, Ron Yekutiel had said the firm had no plans to open an office in India. However, he added that several partner deals were in the works in India which will help Kaltura reach out to this market.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)