Pylba with Series A funding for Mobile News

Pylba Inc, an international technology company that develops services for mobile news, today announced that it has secured a $1.7 million investment from High-Tech Gruenderfonds (HTGF), a Germany-based venture capital company, and several strategic investors and business angels.

Pylba offers a Mobile Media Publishing Platform (M2P2) that enables publishers to deliver their content to mobile users through an elegant and intuitive app, named Simply.

Through Simply, mobile users can very efficiently get an overview about a large number of current news from a variety of sources. Simply classifies all news into clusters and automatically creates one-page summaries for each article. Users can swipe through these summaries and decide which articles to fully read.

Publishers get additional reach and can choose between various revenue models.

Pylba was founded in March 2012 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California. The German management team is currently working along-side the engineering team in the Pylba subsidiary in Munich. This world-class team consists of several serial entrepreneurs who were involved in international startups since 1995. Pylba’s CTO Dr. Stephan Gillmeier is well known in the mobile community, a frequent speaker at conferences, and creator of apps that reached more than ten times the #1 spot in the German app market, as well as top positions in 30 other countries, with more than four million downloads overall.

The funding round will be used primarily to enhance the product and to bring it to international markets. Simply will be launched in Germany in Q2/2013, with other geographies to follow.

Franz Buchenberger, CEO of Pylba, commented: “I am excited to have these experienced investors working with us. Their extensive business network and experience is a great extension to our amazing engineering team. With this round of funding, we will be able to show how news can be offered ideally in a mobile environment. The publishing industry is going through difficult times. We believe we can help with better connecting content and users.“

Curtis MacDonald, Investment Manager at HTGF, said: “Pylba is our first investment directly into a US-founded startup with German founders. It was appealing to us to find a young company that combines the dynamics and no-compromise design approach of a US startup with the strength of a very experienced German engineering team. We expect that Pylba will quickly convince very many users, and will also establish successful partnerships with many publishers.“

Munjal Shah, Board Member at Pylba, stated: „I know the Pylba team for more than 15 years. Having started, evolved and exited several startups myself, I know how hard it is to bring together a team with such quality. In California, this is the biggest issue for startups. Starting with such a terrific team from Germany and then expanding internationally is a promising concept. I look forward to supporting Pylba with my Valley network and experience.“

About Pylba
Pylba Inc., an international startup with headquarters in California and strong engineering in Germany, creates new services that enable news consumption on mobile devices in unique ways. The mobile app „Simply“ will be launched in Q2/2013, and aims to become the standard for quickly getting an informed overview on what is relevant and new. Pylba has secured investments from HTGF, strategic partners and business angels. For more information about Pylba, please visit: https://www.pylba.com

For more information, please contact:
press@pylba.com
Inc.314 27th Ave
San Mateo, CA, 94403

Pylba GmbH
Dachauer Str. 17
80335 Munich

About High-Tech Gruenderfonds (HTGF)
High-Tech Gruenderfonds invests in young, high potential high-tech start-ups. The seed financing provided is designed to enable start-ups to take an idea through prototyping and to market launch. Typically, High Tech Gruenderfonds invests EUR 500,000 in the seed stage, with the potential for up to a total of EUR 2mm per portfolio company in follow-on financing. Investors in this public/private partnership include the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the KfW Banking Group, as well as twelve industrial groups of ALTANA, BASF, B. Braun, Robert Bosch, CEWE Color, Daimler, Deutsche Post DHL, Deutsche Telekom, Qiagen, RWE Innogy, Tengelmann and Carl Zeiss. High-Tech Gruenderfonds has about EUR 560.5 million under management in two funds (EUR 272 million EUR HTGF I, EUR 288.5 million HTGF II).