Jingle Networks received a fat check from Goldman Sachs & Co. and Hearst Corp today when they closed $30 million Series C round of funding. Since its launch in September 2005, Jingle has received more than $26 million dollars in Series A and B rounds of funding from investors including Liberty Associated Partners, First Round Capital, IDG Ventures Boston, Lead Dog Ventures, and Comcast Interactive Capital.
Jingle has experienced an explosive growth ever since the launch of its advertiser-supported directory assistance service. When you call into Jingle system for directory assistance, Jingle system will play 2 short advertisements while it looks up for the required information. Jingle processed user calls using a combination of IVR speech recognition technology and live operators. As compared to traditional directory assistance where you need to pay $3+ for a number lookup, at Jingle you have to pay nothing.
Jingle advertising customers include CBS, 1-800-flowers.com, 1-800-Mattress, 1-800 CONTACTS, Discount Tire, ID Media, Ingenio, and OMD. CBS has been promoting its fall TV lineup, for shows including “Survivor,” “The Amazing Race,” “The Class,” “Smith,” “Jericho,” and “Ghost Whisperer”, on the Jingle Network.
According to estimates Jingle is already processing 3 percent of directory assistance calls in the U.S. Currently Jingle is receiving more than 13 million inquiries from more than four million consumers each month. I am not sure whether Jingle has been able to break even on the investment till date.
It has been amazing how technology has changed the telecom landscape in terms of cost to end-user. During my initial days in US 7 years back, I had unknowingly called directory assistance service 3 times and ended up paying $18 for those calls. Aside from the DA calls, calling India used to be around 57 cents/minute which is now 8 cents. Apart from India, you can also call for free to 50 countries using Futurephone. Similarly you can use Instacoll for web-conferencing which is currently free, instead of paying $50/month to Webex.
Links:
Jingle Networks — free411.com
Tags: StartupSquad – Funding
November 3, 2006 at 5:08 pm |
[...] Blyx will be looking to provide targeted advertising according to users interests. To get started with the service, users will have to fill out a questionnaire detailing personal interests. Blyk will than send out a SIM card offering an as yet unspecified number of voice minutes and text messages per month. It is not yet clear whether the adversting will be served in form of SMS based messages or audio messages as in the case of FREE411. [...]