Aloqa Inc receives a $1.5 million investment

PRESS RELEASE - Aloqa Inc receives a $1.5 million investment

Aloqa (www.aloqa.com) announced today that it has closed $1.5 million in series-A funding and opened a beta of its context-aware mobile application on Android handsets. Aloqa was selected to demonstrate its application on stage today at the MobileBeat Conference, hosted by VentureBeat in San Francisco.

Aloqa has solved two problems for mobile users: it takes away the need to type search terms into browsers or other mobile applications to find something, and also proactively recommends interesting local opportunities to users on the go. Wherever they are, users can simply glance at their phones and see which friends, favorite businesses, events like music concerts, local offers and other interesting places are close by, without having to launch a browser or search application. Aloqa takes into account the user’s location, preferences and social relationships to make these recommendations in real time. A video of the Aloqa application in action can be viewed at http://www.aloqa.com

Series-A Funding & CEO Appointment

Wellington Partners, and prominent angels involved in mobile and search technology, provided Aloqa with $1.5 million in series-A funding. Along with the funding Aloqa appointed Sanjeev Agrawal, former Global Head of Google Product Marketing and subsequently VP Products at TellMe Networks (acquired by Microsoft), as CEO. The company also established its official U.S. headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

“Aloqa makes mobile phones a lot more useful. As a user, it’s painful launching browsers and typing or speaking into apps. And even if doing searches becomes easier on mobile, it still doesn’t solve a bigger issue – every day all of us miss out on all kinds of opportunities we aren’t even aware of such as discovering friends who happen to be close by, or that there are concerts happening locally that we’d like, or sales and bargains all around us. Aloqa solves both the search and discovery issues by utilizing a user’s context – their location, time, preferences, and relationships – to notify them in real time of friends, places, events, and entertainment opportunities around them without delays” said Sanjeev Agrawal, CEO of Aloqa.

“What appealed to us about Aloqa is its proprietary technology for tracking billions of moving and static objects without draining mobile handset batteries, without jamming cellular networks with extra data, and without creating user privacy concerns,” said Ram Srinivasan, managing partner of Wellington Partners’ Palo Alto office. “The mobile app springs into action only when two or more objects come meaningfully close to each other. Apply that concept to people’s “social graph” and you have a powerful way for the mobile device to discover interests and add social context to the physical space immediately around you.”

Android Beta For Limited Time

Aloqa has opened a beta of its context-aware mobile application on Android handsets in USA and Germany; the beta will be available to users for a limited time directly on the Android Marketplace. For instructions, see http://www.aloqa.com/myaloqa/download. Aloqa will be made fully available on most major mobile platforms through the fall of 2009, and will work on both GPS- and non-GPS enabled handsets and on any carrier network.

About Aloqa

Aloqa is the first company to provide mobile users with context relevant alerts and notifications. Based on their location, preferences and social relationships, Aloqa users see what’s close to them without having to type anything into a browser or search application: their favorite businesses and points of interest, deals / coupons nearby, music performances and events, and Facebook friends in proximity. As they move, Aloqa refreshes automatically, so users never miss a social opportunity, event, or bargain.

Aloqa has offices in Palo Alto, California, and Munich, Germany. More information about Aloqa can be found at http://www.aloqa.com.

About Wellington Partners

Wellington Partners is one of the most successful pan-European venture capital firms. With some over $1.1 Billion under management and offices in London, Munich, Palo Alto and Zurich, the firm invests into companies throughout Europe that have the potential to become global leaders, in the areas of Digital Media, Cleantech, Electronics, Software and Life Sciences.

Since 1998, Wellington Partners has invested in more than 100 companies in Europe and Israel, including now publicly traded Actelion, SAF and XING and successful privately held companies like Alando (acquired by eBay), Ciao (acquired by Microsoft) and ImmobilienScout24 (acquired by Deutsche Telekom). For more information please visit www.wellington-partners.com.