Nordic Venture Partners makes investment in ZYB
COPENHAGEN, Denmark - 16. October 2006 - Nordic Venture Partners, the leading Scandinavian ICT venture capital firm, today announced that it has invested several million € in ZYB, a free mobile backup and sharing service operating on a global level. Also announced today, Preben Damgaard, co-founder of Damgaard/Navision and former Executive Vice President of Microsoft Business Solutions, has joined ZYB’s board of directors.
ZYB was founded back in 2005 by three Copenhagen based entrepreneurs Tommy Ahlers, Ole Kristensen, and Morten Lund, who was also one of the early investors behind Skype. The online service was launched in June 2006 and now, four months later, ZYB service has already placed itself solidly on top of the global scene for mobile backup services.
ZYB presents a surprisingly simple solution for mobile phone users to securely backup their personal data and has unique social networking capabilities by allowing users to share the personal content stored on their mobile with others and receive updated contact details and calendar events directly on their mobile.
Tommy Ahlers, CEO and co-founder of ZYB, says “Since the full launch of ZYB, users have flocked to the service, partly to make sure they’ll never lose their mobiles contacts again, and partly because they want to be able to expand their mobiles social capabilities”.
Henrik Albertsen, Managing General Partner, Nordic Venture Partners, says “We see a big potential market for mobile backup and management services. People have many vital personal data stored on their mobiles and as the amount of data increases they are getting more and more concerned about losing it.”
ZYB is not the only service offering mobile backup, but Nordic Venture Partners is in no doubt that the right player has been selected.
“We only invest in company’s we believe can be commercialized on an international scale. ZYB has positioned itself globally as the preferred mobile backup service by catering to the users needs with a brilliant user interface and in a way superior to all other similar services”, says Albertsen.
The investment will boost ZYB’s expansion and the company is doubling its number of employees before entering into next year.
Tommy Ahlers says “We are very excited about getting Nordic Venture Partners as our main investor. This will allow us to expand more rapidly while concentrating on improving and broadening our service. In the coming months we will enter into partnerships with telco’s ”
About ZYB
ZYB’s desire is to let people all around the world back-up and share their mobile’s data for free. ZYB was founded 2005 by three entrepreneurs from Copenhagen (Tommy Ahlers, Ole Kristensen, and Morten Lund, one of the early investors behind Skype)
See more about ZYB on www.zyb.com
About Nordic Venture Partners
Nordic Venture Partners (NVP) is a leading pan-Nordic venture capital firm focusing on Nordic investments within the information and communication technologies (ICT) segment. The multi-stage NVP fund was established in 2000, and has approximately €300 million under management in three funds. NVP is committed to commercializing technologies beyond the Nordic region and to build sustainable companies over time. NVP invests in all stages of a company's cycle from seed up to pre-IPO; but only in sectors where NVP believes there are opportunities for global market growth and where the technologies are globally defendable.
See more about Nordic Venture Partners on www.nordic.com
For more information, please contact:
ZYB:
Runar Reistrup, Head of Communications
runar@zyb.com
+45 25148755
or
Tommy Ahlers, CEO
tommy@zyb.com
+45 51223318
Nordic Venture Partners:
Henrik Albertsen, Managing General Partner
hal@nordicvc.com
+45 22726773