Mobeam has added $1.5 million finding to a 4.9 million Series A venture round announced in October 2011. The money comes from new investor DFJ Athena, a Korea-focused venture fund affiliated with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, as well as new funds from existing investor and board chairman Ben DuPont. DFJ Athena’s founder and managing director, Perry Ha, also joins mobeam’s board of directors.
The funding follows the company’s announcement in December that it is partnering with Procter & Gamble to bring a mobile couponing system to market. Mobeam’s technology enables mobile phones to be scanned by point of sale laser scanners.
“As is demonstrated by the partnership between mobeam and the world’s largest consumer packaged goods producer, P&G, coupons are the missing link in the mobile commerce value chain,” said Perry Ha, founder and managing director of DFJ Athena. “With a global retail infrastructure already in place that utilizes a very widely accepted standard for coupon scanning – one dimensional barcodes, or UPC symbols – what is necessary is for the mobile technology to embrace that infrastructure. The most elegant way to do that is through a software solution. With many handset makers in Korea, DFJ Athena believed investing in mobeam’s software based solution was an obvious choice.”
Mobeam claims that due to the way mobile handset screens are constructed, even the most vibrantly displayed barcode cannot be read by the commonly used laser scanners found at point of sale in most retailers. Mobeam’s claim is that its technology adapts existing mobile technology to already-deployed retail POS infrastructure, opening the door to a wide range of previously impossible mobile commerce programs and services.
Mobeam uses LED technology present on many of handsets to transform barcodes into a beam of light that every laser scanner can read. The diea is that this makes it possible for a phone to present a coupon that can be easily and conveniently scanned and redeemed, without the need for retailers to upgrade their technology. Beyond mobile couponing, mobeam’s technology could enable applications such as mobile ticketing and content services.