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Hyderabad based mobile TV company, Apalya Technologies Pvt. Ltd, has received $500,000 (Rs 2 crore) investment from Mumbai Angels, a network of angel investors. Apalya aggregates premium entertainment content from many different content providers, and then optimises the content to be suitable for small screen or mobile viewing.
The firm was founded in December 2005 by Vamshi Reddy and Shiva Bayyapunedi, who have combined experience of 26 years in the IT industry. "We wanted to focus on mobile technology and felt that most of the market was dominated by WAP related applications. We felt that mobile TV will take off," said Vamshi Reddy, Co-Founder and Director of Apalya Technologies Pvt Ltd.
"We had seen a lot of people try to bring in 3G solutions and slap it into existing networks and fail. What we tried to do is to build a customised solutions which would work in client's 2G network and eventually evolve into 3G," he added.
Apalya has built up a clientele of 30,000 paid subscribers across the country and has a 24 people team in Hyderabad. It plans to expand the marketing team and infrastructure. "Funds are primarily going to be used to expand the team on the marketing front and for setting up the infrastructure. We will work with each operator to take the product to the next level," said Reddy. Bayyapunedi and Reddy had invested $250,000 in the venture.
"We have developed a propriety technology of our own which basically does a progressive play of radio," said Reddy. Apalya has tied up with most of the telecom operators in the country including Idea Cellular, BSNL, Vodafone, among others. It has also tied up with 40 television channels, which includes most of the news channels and regional channels. The company has tie-ups with some general entertainment channels such as Zoom and Turner international (Cartoon Network), and is working on expanding its offering in this segment.
"The main focus for us was to build a platform and have the whole solution ready integrated with every operator. So when 3G comes in we can exploit the market," said Reddy. "We are in 3G trials with some operators right and expect to roll out the product in the next 3-6 months," he added.
Apalya provides its customers with On Demand Movies, Timely News, Sports, Movie Advertisements, Premium TV Soap's, Interactive and Collaborative TV and Personalized Content.
Mumbai Angels have previously backed firms like distressed inventory travel website AtYourPrice.in, mobile advertising company mKhoj, digital photo company Canvera, and Bangalore-based text mining company Textual Analytics Solutions. They also recently invested in Fin-e-ssential Infotech India Ltd, a payroll and HR process management company.