Golden Gekko, a London-based company that has developed what it describes as: a revolutionary mobile application platform that can be used for marketing purposes and as a mobile workforce application, has closed its first financial round with Active Capital Partners (ACP), a European early-stage investor based in Barcelona.
There is an increasing demand from larger companies to find new ways of reaching end consumers through their mobile devices, the company notes. A number of companies have thrown themselves into this space in order to get a share of the market. The key is to find an attractive way of doing so, that is cost effective, that has an effective impact on the consumer without being intrusive and that is quickly deployable. Golden Gekko says it has found its way to offer all that with its Mobile Media Engine.
The Golden Gekko mobile application platform can be used to create sophisticated Java applications for marketing purposes in less than a week. It can also be used to create new sales channels or to automate simple business processes for a mobile workforce. All this with a very cost efficient platform that can be used on any of the over 500 different mobile models that exist today.
According to Informa Telecoms & Media, worldwide spending on mobile advertising last year was 622 million (447 million), compared with 17 billion spent on Internet advertising, and 321 billion spent on advertising in general. Informa forecasts that annual expenditure on mobile advertising will reach 8 billion by 2011. Other analysts predict the market will be as big as $20 billion (9.7 billion) by then.
Golden Gekko says that it has spent the last two years developing a mobile application platform and that it has successfully delivered turnkey projects for companies such as Absolut Vodka, Accenture, Arla Foods, Cadburys, Coca-Cola, Novartis, Paramount, Perfetti, TV4, Unilever and Vodafone.
The company was founded in 2005 by CEO Magnus Jern and CTO Daniel Karlstrm in Sweden. It employs 14 people, has development facilities in Cambodia and Barcelona, with sales offices in the UK, Sweden and Spain.
Advertising through mobiles is a very attractive market to be part of over the coming years, says  ACPs Ricard Sderberg. What impressed us about Golden Gekko are the management, the volume of business and the key clients they have amassed in such a short time of period. We are thrilled to support Magnus and his team to gain a leading position in applications for mobile advertising.
Golden Gekko CEO Magnus Jern adds:
Having successfully developed and launched applications based on the GG Mobile Media Engine with more than 15 major customers, this new investment enables us to continue our unprecedented growth and invest in building a team that can effectively take advantage of the vast opportunities in front of us. We are also very fortunate to add new members to our board and advisory panel. They bring a wealth of experience that complements the strengths of our existing team very well.
As part of the investment, Ricard Sderberg of ACP will join the board of directors of Golden Gekko.