Movile Raises $40M in Funding to Boost Blossoming Suite of Robust Mobile Commerce Apps

Today, Movile , Latin America’s leading mobile commerce platform, announces a $40 million round of funding led by Naspers , a strategic partner and majority shareholder of Movile since 2008. Movile will use this funding to accelerate efforts in Online-to-Offline (O2O) mobile commerce and mobile entertainment.    

This investment follows a period of considerable growth for Movile. The company invested in several O2O startups, including iFood ,   Apontador ,   Maplink , and CinePapaya , involving food delivery, local business reviews, geo-positioning, and ticket sales respectively. Movile’s aggressive expansion and mobile expertise boosted these companies operations, including a 300 percent increase in orders taken by iFood between January and August 2014. This allowed iFood to become the regional leader in Latin America with an 80% market share in Brazil.  

Meanwhile PlayKids , Movile’s children’s education and entertainment app featuring a hybrid content strategy with eBooks, activities, shows, nursery rhymes and lullabies , expanded to 27 countries and, according to Distimo, was the number one grossing iOS kids app globally in 2014. Additionally, PlayKids entered the Chinese market in December 2014, where it became a top five grossing children’s app in less than two months of operations and secured over 300,000 downloads in less than 30 days. Investment in PlayKids is also supported by FINEP, Brazil’s Funding Authority for Studies and Projects within the Ministry of Technology, which provided $20 million in long-term financing for this and other app development projects in 2014.  

“This funding signals our continued growth in Latin America and beyond,” explained Fabricio Bloisi CEO and Founder of Movile . “Having established ourselves as market leaders in Brazil across a variety of mobile commerce verticals, we’ve entered new markets aggressively in 2014, employing the Silicon Valley motto of ‘move fast and adapt quickly’. The result has been that our products have been positioned for growth globally.”   This funding coincides with a sharp increase in global mobile commerce. According to Goldman Sachs , mobile sales worldwide are projected to be $626 billion by 2018. Over 535 million consumers worldwide already made a purchase on a mobile device in 2014. In Latin America, Brazilian mobile internet penetration grew 244% while mobile commerce doubled its share of overall e-commerce between 2013 and 2014.  

About Movile:
Movile is the largest mobile platform in Latin America. Its product portfolio includes smartphone and tablet applications for content and commerce. Movile has over 600 employees and is connected to more than 40 carriers that collectively have over 700 million mobile subscribers. More than 50 million people experience Movile’s products and services per month. Learn more at movile.com/en  

About Naspers:
Founded in 1915, Naspers is a broad-based multinational internet and media group offering services in more than 130 countries. Its principal operations are in ecommerce (i.e. classifieds, online retail, marketplaces, online comparison shopping, payments and online services), pay-television and print media. The group also has minority investments in listed, integrated social-network platforms Tencent (SEHK 0700) and Mail.ru (LSE: MAIL). Naspers is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (NPN.SJ) and has an ADR listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: NPSN). For more information, please visit www.naspers.com   Media Contact: Maggie Philbin VSCpr on behalf of Movile maggie@vscpr.com 203.394.1818

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