Mobile marketing company Upstream sees €11m in growth capital funding

With 2008 revenues exceeding €38m, Upstream’s list of customers includes mobile operators such as Vodafone Italy & Romania, TIM Italy & Brazil, Orange Spain, Comcel Colombia, Personal Argentina, O2 Czech Republic, TMN Portugal and Cosmote in Greece. The company also counts brands and media blue chip companies such as Nestlé, The Coca-Cola Company, Shell, BSkyB and ESMAS as its customers.

Upstream has been profitable from the first year of its operation and its growth has been entirely self-financed. It will use this funding to drive more rapid growth in winning mobile operator customers across the globe.

Marco Veremis, chairman of the board of Upstream, said, “We are delighted to have both TLcom Capital and Alpha Ventures as partners at this stage of rapid growth for the company. Their investment will assist us significantly in meeting the growing demand for Upstream’s services from existing and new customers. In addition, their respective experience and expertise will be important to us in reaching our goal of placing the company at the forefront of innovation and sustainable leadership in the mobile marketing space.”

Mauro Pretolani, general partner of TLcom Capital, added, “Upstream is a strong innovator in the international Mobile Value Added Services market, where the company has been able to offer new services to consumers while engaging the operators with innovative business models that are well suited to the operators’ needs of limiting investments and risks, a factor more relevant than ever in this difficult economic climate. TLcom is pleased to be able to participate to the fast growth that the company is experiencing and will support the company along the path that leads to global leadership.”

TLcom Capital is a London-based private equity management company dedicated to the European technology growth capital sector since 1999. TLcom has €200m of assets under management, with 26 portfolio companies.
 
Alpha Ventures was established in 1990 as the private equity arm of the Alpha Bank Group, among the largest non-state owned financial institutions in Greece. The firm has invested in more than 35 unquoted companies in Greece and the Balkan area.

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