T-Venture, the venture capital division of Germany-based telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom, has invested in Netherlands-based mobile devices management company Veliq. The amount invested was undisclosed but was described in a T-Venture press release as ‘several million euros’.
Veliq is the second Netherlands-based company T-Venture haw funded, after acquiring a minority stake in medical database provider Portavita, in November 2009. The T-Venture financing is the first outside funding raised by Veliq, which has grown autonomously since its founding in 2006.
Veliq has developed a mobile device management service it calls Mobidm. Mobidm allows companies to manage smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) from a single central portal, which it claims decreases the likelihood of data theft while increasing productivity.
Marcus Hacke, senior vice president of portfolio & solution design at T-Systems, said: "Through our partnership with Veliq we complement our portfolio with a comprehensive solution of Mobile Device Management as ‘Software as a Service’, a solution that responds to the strongly growing demand from large corporations through its flexibility, attractive conditions and rich feature set."
Alex Bausch, founder of Veliq, added: "From the various interested investors, we chose T-Venture as Mobidm fits in seamlessly with the ‘managed services’ strategy of T-Systems and Deutsche Telekom, and they have a reliable reputation as long-term strategic investors."
Veliq is currently providing Mobidm systems in ten European countries, though this is generally done through telecom providers and system integrators, such as T-Systems, and under a different brand name or as part of a larger package.
Companies Veliq has partnerships with include UK-based telecommunications conglomerate Vodafone and US-based database software company Sybase, now owned by Germany-based software conglomerate SAP.