Startup Kiosked links images on the Web to online stores; “We timestamp every single event, how the mouse moves, what is clicked and so on. We know in real time what products sell at which price and in which color where.”

September 20, 2013 Leave a comment

Kiosked Linking Kobe Clips to Nike Store Draws Investors

Kiosked Oy, a startup that links images on the Web to online stores, plans to triple its workforce after attracting a Digital Sky Technologies partner to its board in its second round of multimillion-dollar funding. The Finnish company collected $6.9 million from private investors including John Lindfors, who is joining the board with event producer Kevin Wall. Lindfors has been at Digital Sky, billionaire Yuri Milner’s investment firm that backed Facebook Inc., for three years, and previously ran Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Europe technology investment banking.“What these people bring us is substance and credibility,” Kiosked founder and Chief Executive Officer Micke Paqvalen said over coffee at the company’s glass-walled headquarters in Espoo, Finland. “Now we’re going to hit the accelerator hard.”

Kiosked, founded in 2010, develops technology that makes it easier for people to buy an item they see in an online picture or video clip — be it a news photo or sports highlight reel. It is seeking to expand in a market also targeted by companies such as Mountain View, California-based Luminate Inc.

Last year, Kiosked received a $5.75 million funding round led by Kaj Hed, who is chairman of “Angry Birds” maker Rovio Entertainment Oy and also participated in the most recent round. Another early investor and board member is Andreas Rosenlew, chairman and founder of brand consultancy Grow Partners AB. In January, Kiosked brought in Tero Ojanperae, the former head of Nokia Oyj (NOK1V)’s service unit.

Wall is the CEO and founder of Control Room, which organized the opening concert for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

Kobe’s Shoes

Kiosked’s technology links advertisers’ products to relevant online content. A compilation clip of basketball player Kobe Bryant’s dunks might be automatically tagged with a link to purchase the Nike Inc. (NKE) shoes he’s wearing. In addition to Nike, customers include video-platform provider Brightcove Inc. (BCOV) and stock-photo supplier Getty Images.

The company charges advertisers 10 percent per transaction on average, half of which goes to the content-sharing party. Kiosked also charges 1 to 5 cents when a user clicks into the store to look for more information.

The company seeks to boost its workforce to 200 over the next 12 months from the current 60, targeting mainly northern Europe, the U.K., the U.S., southeast Asia and China.

Kiosked also plans to provide detailed retail analytics through its platform, which tracks consumers’ actions, according to CEO Paqvalen.

“We timestamp every single event, how the mouse moves, what is clicked and so on,” he said. “We know in real time what products sell at which price and in which color where.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Kasper Viita in Helsinki at kviita1@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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