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Venture Capital News: Tely Labs Raises $15M in Strategic Funding

2012-10-23
MENLO PARK, CA, maker of the award-winning telyHD video calling system for consumers announced strategic investments totaling $15 million from Comcast Ventures and Rogers Venture Partners.
Tely Labs, maker of the award-winning telyHD video calling system for consumers, today announced it is broadening its business strategy and extending its innovative technology with an all-new business video conferencing solution. Backed by strategic investments totaling $15 million from Comcast Ventures and Rogers Venture Partners, Tely Labs received its first institutional funding to jumpstart its new business focus addressing the significant market demand for feature-rich but affordable video conferencing for small and medium businesses (SMBs).

Innovative and Affordable Solution
The new telyHD Business Edition (BE) is the first video conferencing solution to bring high- quality, multi-party video calling, desktop sharing and document collaboration into a price range accessible by businesses of any size. Built on the flexible Android platform and utilizing Tely Labs' newly-developed Virtual MCU Mesh (VMM) technology, telyHD BE was designed with the advanced capabilities and video quality of an enterprise solution, while improving ease-of-use, simplifying set-up and minimizing operating costs. For about $500 per location, businesses can connect up to six offices simultaneously in a multi-party video call with real-time, high quality video and audio while simultaneously sharing desktops and collaborating on documents. With telyHD BE, it's easy and affordable to connect employees, clients and vendors in distant offices without the high costs and hassles of travel.

telyHD BE features an innovative Windows app that enables wireless desktop sharing and document collaboration, making it easy to share Microsoft Office documents, Adobe PDFs and web pages while on a multi-party video call. telyHD is also Skype Certified, so any Skype user on any Skype-enabled device can be a participant in a point to point or multi-party call.

Strong Market Opportunity
"Our goal is to bring full featured, high quality video conferencing to small and medium business users that have been priced out of the market and not able to benefit from its many business advantages," said Sreekanth Ravi, CEO of Tely Labs. "Offering more than an amazing price, telyHD BE maximizes the power and expandability of the Android platform and utilizes our proprietary VMM technology to deliver a high quality video and audio experience."

"The disruptive technologies in Tely Labs' innovative video conferencing system finally put enterprise-class video quality and features in the hands of small and medium businesses at a fraction of the current cost," said Louis Toth, Managing Director of Comcast Ventures. "telyHD BE is exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on the sizable market opportunity for affordable video conferencing solutions bringing advanced capabilities and simplicity to SMBs. We look forward to helping Tely Labs drive innovation in this fast growing segment of video conferencing."

Flagship Product Makes Inroads Into Business
telyHD BE is a new extension to the highly-acclaimed flagship product, telyHD, that began shipping to consumers in January 2012. An affordable, high-definition Skype video calling system for the living room, telyHD was not only popular with consumers, but also purchased by many small and medium businesses.

"We have been recommending and installing telyHD-based video calling solutions to numerous small and medium businesses in the high-tech and finance arena primarily due to its quality, simplicity and affordability," said Martin Dunsby, CEO of Hybridge IT, a San Francisco based technology consultancy. "With the introduction of telyHD BE, we can address a much larger segment of the SMB market and start serving businesses spread out over multiple locations. telyHD BE builds on the success of telyHD with important new business capabilities such as multi-party video calling, collaboration and more."

Bits & Bytes
telyHD BE is a fully integrated platform that works with any HD TV and requires no computer for set-up or use. Built on the NVIDIA Tegra-2 Dual Core ARM A9 processor with hardware H.264 video acceleration, telyHD BE has the power to drive high quality video and audio performance, and the Android OS foundation allows for both proprietary and third party app development today and in the future.

About Tely Labs
Founded in 2010 by the successful entrepreneurial team of Sreekanth Ravi (President and CEO) and Sudhakar Ravi (CTO), Tely Labs is a pioneer in developing simple, affordable next-generation consumer and business video communications systems that fundamentally change the way people around the globe keep in touch. The company's flagship product, telyHD, is built on the Android operating system and delivers full HD Skype video calling to the living room or the conference room on a high-definition TV, along with a growing number of other applications. Tely Labs is based in Menlo Park, California.
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