Mobile Distillery Secures 2 Million Euros Investment

Mobile Distillery, the leading developer of porting and optimising software solutions for the mobile application industry, today announced that it has secured 2 million Euros in a Series A funding round with two Innoveris funds managed by technology venture capital firm Viveris Management.

Mobile Distillery will use this new investment to strengthen its already leading position in Europe. The company will open a Paris office, enhance its sales and marketing force internationally, and fund growth into North America and India, where its technical and training support for customers and technology partners will be expanded.

Headquartered in Marseille, France, in the heart of the French mobile valley, Mobile Distillery was founded in 2005 to address the problems associated with device and platform fragmentation in the mobile content and enterprise markets. Its customers include mobile business application developers, mobile marketing agencies and mobile games companies worldwide. Its award-winning automatic porting and optimization software platform, Celsius, enables application developers to create hundreds of individually optimized mobile applications from a single set of source code and art assets. By using Celsius as part of their development process, companies speed up development and reduce porting time by up to 80%.

“We are delighted to have Viveris on board as investor. Mobile Distillery experienced strong growth over the past year as Celsius helped more companies solve the challenges of ever-increasing device fragmentation,” commented Eric Lemaréchal, Co-Founder & CEO of Mobile Distillery. “This investment will enable us to expand our global presence and capitalize on the demand for easy-to-use, web-to-mobile, client-server applications, as corporations execute on their plans to go-to-mobile to deliver innovative professional and consumer services.”

Vincent Berge, Co-Founder & General Manager added, “Manufacturers are continually adding new power and functionality with every major handset releases, while more platforms and operating systems – most recently Google’s Android – continue to emerge. Inevitably the gulf that exists between the handsets of today and tomorrow is widening. This new investment enables us to respond to rigorous technology challenges and increasing customer demands”.

“Our decision to invest in Mobile Distillery came from the strength of their vision for the future of the mobile industry,” said Cyprien Roy, Investment Manager, Viveris Management, and the latest addition to Mobile Distillery’s Board of Directors. “We believe Mobile Distillery’s technologies will prove to be pivotal in bringing down the barriers that fragmentation is currently creating in the mobile marketplace.”

Paris based financial firm MGT served as Mobile Distillery’s counsel throughout the funding round.

Note to editors: Mobile Distillery will preview Celsius V4.5 and next generation technology – incorporating support for Google’s Android platform – at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, 11-14 February 2008. Stand No: 2F49(2)

About Mobile Distillery

A specialist in mobile technologies, especially Java™ Micro Edition and BREW, Mobile Distillery develops and sells unique solutions, enabling the optimisation and automatic porting of mobile applications across more than 700 handsets (Java & BREW). These solutions radically simplify and optimize application development processes, reduce porting cycles by up to 80%, generating cost savings, and accelerating time-to-market. Mobile Distillery’s customers include web specialists mobile game publishers, mobile marketing agencies, as well as developers and publishers across the mobile application ecosystem.

For 2007, more than 200 different mobile applications had been created using Celsius solutions around the world. Celsius servers have generated over 250,000 compilations in total. Additional information is available at http://www.mobile-distillery.com/ [1].

About the Innoveris funds

Issued and managed by Viveris Management, the Innoveris FCPIs make minority equity investments in mainly unlisted small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The Innoveris funds invest through venture capital and expansion capital deals and manage  €174 million as end of 2007 in the framework of the seven existing Innoveris FCPIs (I to VII). With the 2007 vintage Innoveris VIII, €16 million were raised at the end of 2007. The Innoveris funds gather more than 40 portfolio companies.  Nearly €72 million were invested in technology venture capital since the establishment of Viveris Management in 2000.

Viveris Management, a management company specialized in private equity for third parties, manages more than €400 million as end of 2007. Viveris Management is active in the main segments of private equity: technology venture capital at a national level, expansion capital deals and buyouts at a regional level (South East of France and Corsica, French overseas and Mediterranean region). Viveris Management has a reliable and balanced shareholding comprising the Caisse d’Épargne group and the management.