Buzzvil, a South Korea-based mobile advertising platform backed by steel producer Posco, has received ₩20.5bn ($17m) in series C funding from investment partnership Mega-7 Club.
Mega-7 Club’s backers include financial services firms Shinhan Bank and SBI Holdings, LB Investment, Company K Partners and the government-owned Korea Development Bank.
Founded in 2012, Buzzvil has created a mobile platform with 10.5 million monthly active users that displays advertising on the lock screens of mobile devices as well as other interfaces utilising the Android operating system.
The funding will go toward international expansion and the strengthening of the company’s machine learning-equipped customer targeting technology.
Buzzvill raised $3.8m in 2013 from SoftBank Investment Advisers, the subsidiary of telecommunications group SoftBank that manages its Vision Fund.
The company added $11.1m from Posco’s investment arm, Posco Ventures, as well as LB Investment, Company K Partners, ES Investment and KTB Network two years later.