International expansion is on the programme for Finnish social TV startup Tellyo following a 200,000 euro seed investment from GS Venture, the corporate venture fund of international GS Group.
Tellyo’s Share the Moment service allows viewers of live television to grab a short clip of what they just watched using an app on devices like smartphones or tablets and instantly share them with friends across social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
— Our resources were very limited. Now we can build products we have been dreaming about,Kimmo Koivisto, Co-Founder and CEO Tellyo told Good News from Finland.
— This will give us much more power to expand internationally and develop the business on a different scale from what we would have been able to do by ourselves.
Koivisto said the company was hiring five to six people straightaway and planning to hire a couple more at the end of the summer.
— Maybe more important than the money is the collaboration and support we get from the network of our investor, he added.
Tellyo says shared TV moments amplify audience engagement and provides an additional revenue stream for broadcasters.
—It is a service, which we believe could become very successful and we look forward to seeing the service being adopted by many more operators wishing to boost their advertising revenues, said Sergei Filimonov, Head of GS Venture within the GS Group.
—We are not only investing to accelerate the company’s growth, but we expect our globally expanding network of operators to further adopt Tellyo’s services.
GS Venture says it is keen to hear from other Finnish startups working in its core business interests of TV and TV related services as well as consumer electronics development and microchip R&D.
— We are looking primarily for projects, which provide a synergy with our businesses, said Filimonov. The Tellyo project is a service, which can be immediately applied or shortly adopted to almost any type of TV broadcasting business.
— Generally the more startups in our targeted fields that apply to GS Venture from Finland, the higher the probability of making jointly profitable business and creating more jobs in Finland.
Share the Moment has already been used by ten TV shows like Big Brother and MasterChef in three countries.
The shared moments from Finnish MTV’s show Comedy Combat recently reached almost two million Facebook users and generated over 100,000 likes.
Tellyo was founded in 2012 by four partners. Its international offices are located in Helsinki, London and Lodz, Poland.
www.tellyo.com
gs-group.com
venture.gs
Article is published in cooperation with Good News from Finland
