ViVu Raises Initial Funding Round Led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Aims at Participative Event Platform for Media Shows and Corporate Conferences

ViVu Inc. announced today that it has raised its initial round of funding led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Amidzad Partners, with participation from Quest Ventures and other angel investors, including serial entrepreneurs Bill Carrico and Amarjit Gil.

Founded by startup veterans from Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent and a team of IIT graduates, ViVu is developing a first-of-its-kind Participative Event Platform that enables live video participation from a PC, Macintosh or smart phone without any proprietary downloads and seamlessly integrates with most of the popular streaming video and conference solutions. The solution can scale from corporate training sessions to large video events with thousands of participants. The funding will enable the company to accelerate product development.

“Our vision is to interactively connect many people over video and make the experience even better than being there,” said Sudha Valluru, CEO and cofounder, ViVu, Inc. “The team developed the first enterprise-quality video over IP a decade ago and is now building a platform that scales and provides the ease-of-use, quality and availability expected in an enterprise.”

“ViVu is going to change the visual experience of watching live online video by making it participative,” said Tim Draper, Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “We believe in investing in companies in many sectors that change the rules of the game – we believe that ViVu is one of those companies.”

The company also announced the establishment of the Technical Advisory Board of Bill Carrico, Phil Graham and John Varney. Bill Carrico was chairman/CEO of Bridge (acquired by 3Com), NCD and Precept (acquired by Cisco). Phil Graham is the vice president of Engineering and CTO of Cisco Telepresence, and John Varney was the CTO of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

“ViVu has created a compelling service that has been positively received by the company’s early adopter customers,” said Bill Carrico, investor and advisor. “The domain expertise of the team and the laser focus on high quality video experience will redefine the way online entertainment, e-learning and corporate communications are conducted today.”

Due to its broad applicability and shrinking corporate travel budgets, the ViVu solution is targeted at enterprises and is being used in a variety of ways: remote training courses, sales training on new products, and remote live video caller participation during Webcasts.

About ViVu, Inc.

ViVu, Inc. creates solutions that transform the way people interact using video. The company was founded by Sudha Valluru and Siva Kiran in 2008. Information about ViVu can be found at http://www.vivu.tv.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson was founded in 1985 and provides capital to extraordinary entrepreneurs anywhere who are determined to change the world. DFJ has been proud to back over 500 companies across many sectors including such industry changing successes such as Hotmail, Skype, and Baidu.

ViVu, the ViVu logo are registered trademarks of ViVu Inc. in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

Contacts

ViVu, Inc.
Saloni Howard-Sarin, 415-860-6408
Director, Marketing
saloni {at} vivu(.)tv
or
ViVu Technologies Private Limited
Vamsi Agasthyaraju, +91 80 42042783
Manager, India Office
vamsi {at} vivu(.)tv