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PunchTab Clocks $4.4M Series A

2011-11-08
Instant loyalty platform allowing bloggers and businesses to create free social and mobile-enabled reward programs, announced it has closed $4.4 million in Series A financing, led by Mohr Davidow Ventures.
SAN JOSE, CA, PunchTab Inc., the world's first instant loyalty platform allowing bloggers and businesses to create free social and mobile-enabled reward programs, today announced it has closed $4.4 million in Series A financing, led by Mohr Davidow Ventures. PunchTab will use the funds to further develop its loyalty and giveaway platform.

Powering more than 3,000 loyalty programs and thousands of giveaways, reaching more than 7.5 million users each month, PunchTab allows bloggers, websites, e-commerce businesses and event organizers to build loyalty and awareness by inspiring consumer engagement and word-of-mouth marketing through online, offline and social channels. Using PunchTab's platform, businesses have experienced a 50 percent increase in Facebook Fans, up to a 100 percent increase in repeat site visitors, and a 2x increase in online purchases.

PunchTab recently announced the debut of its mobile application, PunchTab Local, allowing local businesses to drive in-store traffic and incentivize social sharing of products, services and giveaways. Further, PunchTab now offers plug-ins for the most popular publishing sites, along with mobile and web-based developer tools, including an iOS SDK, allowing mobile developers to extend a loyalty program to mobile applications. PunchTab has most recently extended its platform to the e-commerce community with the successful release of a rewards application for the Shopify App Store.

"We've been listening to our users, refining products and ensuring that we're everywhere they need us to be with the most effective implementation possible to drive real loyalty and meaningful engagement," said Ranjith Kumaran, PunchTab founder. "The Series A funding accelerates our timeline for expanding PunchTab's full suite of loyalty reward programs and sweepstakes, and allows us to deepen our market reach."

"We're confident we've hand-picked the best team for PunchTab, and that this round of funding will provide the opportunity to prove the need for loyalty programs in leveraging the lifetime value of user engagement," said founder Mehdi Ait Oufkir.

Mohr Davidow partner Katherine Barr will join founders Ranjith Kumaran and Mehdi Ait Oufkir on PunchTab's Board of Directors. Barr brings over 13 years of both operating and venture experience and focuses on the web and mobile sectors at Mohr Davidow. Other companies she works with include: Ticketfly, Root Music, Wordnik, Massive Health, and Visible Measures.

"We are excited to be working with Ranjith, Mehdi and their team," said Barr. They have proven to be incredibly nimble to date in scaling their business and building an integrated loyalty platform that is easy to use and drives strong, measurable business value for their customers. The data that they leverage for their business is also compelling, and is something that we look for in many of our web and mobile investments."

In addition to Mohr Davidow, other investors include the Michael Arrington-backed CrunchFund, former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya's The Social+Capital Partnership, and Kosmix (now @WalmartLabs) founders Venky Harinarayan, and Anand Rajaraman, who also participated in PunchTab's seed funding round in February 2011.

About PunchTab, Inc.
Founded in January 2011, PunchTab is the world's first instant loyalty and rewards platform allowing bloggers, brands, and businesses to create free social and mobile-enabled loyalty programs in minutes. Through the PunchTab platform, consumers earn points for engaging on websites, in stores, and social sharing sites like Facebook and Twitter, redeemable for discounts and prizes from a customized catalog. Over 3,000 publishers are using PunchTab's tightly-integrated rewards program to engage and incentivize over 7.5 million consumers every month, with no development or marketing costs. Web and mobile app developers can now utilize the PunchTab Developer Tools for a tightly integrated solution.

Based in Silicon Valley and led by founders Ranjith Kumaran, co-founder of YouSendIt and Mehdi Ait Oufkir, an early YouSendIt employee and founder of JellyDo.com, a location-based reminder service for Foursquare users, PunchTab is funded by Mohr Davidow Ventures, The Social+Capital Partnership, Crunch Fund, Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman. For more information visit www.punchtab.com.

About Mohr Davidow
For more than 25 years, the Mohr Davidow team has invested in startups and worked closely with exceptional entrepreneurs to create venture returns by developing and bringing to market new, technology-based products and services. The firm invests in companies that transform industries whether through better infrastructure for our rapidly evolving data-intensive digital world, more efficient power for our planet, or better, more personalized medicine. Category-leading companies funded by Mohr Davidow include: Agile (ORCL); AudienceScience; Brocade (BRDC); Coupa; Genomatica; Infusionsoft; Kabbage; Nanosolar; nLight; ONI Systems (CIEN); Pacific Biosciences; Panasas; ParAccel; ParAllele (AFFX); Proofpoint; OPXBIO; RainDance Technologies; Rally Software; Rambus; Recurrent Energy (acquired by Sharp Corporation); Rocket Fuel; Shutterfly; Simbol Materials; Ticketfly; Visible Measures; and ZeaChem. The firm has $1.85 billion under management. For more information, visit www.mdv.com.
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