Leading creative industries specialist, Edge Investments (‘Edge’), is pleased to announce that it has invested in a significant minority shareholding in leading Over the Top (‘OTT’) video distribution platform Airbeem.
Airbeem’s multi-use Software as a Service (‘SaaS’) platform seamlessly enables content owners to publish and monetise their video content direct to consumers by creating immersive video experiences reaching audience on all devices.
Its turnkey solution for the middle market provides an end to end solution between content owners and consumers, offering easy and affordable ways for publishers delivering their content to drive various monetisation models and create a compelling user experience around their content.
As research shows an ongoing decline in linear TV viewing, with an average fall of 11% between 2010-15 and a 27% decrease in the 16-24 demographic, online video distribution continues to gather strength. Airbeem is perfectly positioned to benefit from this growth in OTT delivery.
Publishers are keen to move content onto OTT platforms, but are hampered by the complexity of the service offerings, disparate technologies which are required and business models previously available. Without significant in-house development resource, and access to one of the few very costly, large, dominant incumbents, this has proven a very difficult challenge.
Airbeem solves this problem. Its off-the-shelf technology solution enables publishers to grow the channels delivering their content and provides a tailored, enhanced user experience at a significantly lower price than the large incumbents.
Backed by an experienced management team, Airbeem’s platform is technically sophisticated while accessible to smaller, medium and larger publishers and content owners, offering great potential to scale.
Edge’s investment will be used to grow operations and roll-out the platform through increased sales and marketing activity.
David Glick, Founder and CEO at Edge Investments, added:
“People are consuming more video than ever. 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, with the number of hours spent watching its videos up 60% year-on-year. Over half a billion people are watching video on Facebook every day. Netflix has more than 115 million subscribers.
“Businesses need technologies to facilitate the publishing of their video content, an increasingly complex challenge in a multi-format, ever more mobile-led environment. As a market-leading company, Airbeem is well placed to turn videos into revenue generating assets. We are excited to partner with Steve and his team.”
Steve Carle, Investment Director at Edge Investments, said:
“Steve Hardman and his team have built up an impressive business which has successfully become a one-stop-shop for content owners. We were particularly excited by its business model which provides content owners with innovative ways of monetising content. The growth potential for the sector is significant and with the scalability of Airbeem’s technology, we are looking forward to supporting Airbeem as it continues to expand in the booming OTT market.”
Steve Hardman, CEO of Airbeem, commented:
“We’re excited to be partnering with one of the leading lights of the creative industries sector in the UK. The burgeoning video publishing industry is powered by a new generation of over 2.5 billion consumers under the age of 25, whose preferred entertainment consumption has fundamentally changed from the generation before, from big to small screens. Our vision is to make it easy and affordable for any content owner to also be a channel owner and create unique experience around their content giving them the power to take control of how they monetise. We’re looking forward to be partnering with Edge, whose knowledge and track record of investing successfully in content and technology will help us scale our business to take it to the next level.”
- ENDS -
Contacts
Edge - Maitland 020 7379 5151
Jais Mehaji
Airbeem - PRComs
Clare Plaisted 07801 752224
Sally Reid
About Edge
Edge Investments is one of the UK’s most dynamic and innovative specialist investors in the creative industries. Since its launch in 2006 it has raised approaching £200m. In November 2015 Edge launched the Edge Creative Enterprise Fund, a £40 million fund with backing from the British Business Bank.
Recent investments have included Newsflare, the leading open video platform and fast growing British media technology company (December 2016); audioBoom, the spoken word audio platform for hosting, distributing and monetising content (April 2017); Antidote, an independent, factual TV production company, working with major UK and international broadcasters (June 2017); and TRX, an online deal-making platform for TV rights licensing (October 2017).
Edge’s investments have also included children’s entertainment through Coolabi (The Clangers, Beast Quest, Poppy Cat, Scream Street and Warriors); native in-video advertising (Mirriad); live events featuring major international music performers; and mobile games analytics (deltaDNA).
Core to Edge’s approach is its experienced team of creative industries and investment professionals. Its investment team includes Edge Investments’ CEO and renowned industry deal-maker David Glick; experienced VC technology and creative industries investor David Fishe;, private equity veteran Steve Carle; Gordon Power, former CEO of ProVen; Charles Miller Smith, former Unilever director, CEO and chairman of ICI; and Harvey Goldsmith, one of the UK's best-known music industry impresarios. The investment team has also been strengthened by the recent hires of Niall Santamaria and Joshua Burge.
Individually and collectively, the Edge team has been investing in venture capital since 1984 across 11 separate funds
About Airbeem
Airbeem provides an end to end content distribution platform and video experience platform empowering media companies, sports brands, broadcasters and content owners to create their own online video channels. Airbeem's leading software as a service (SaaS) solution is powered by the technology larger broadcasters use, which Airbeem is able to offer to any content owner to help them rapidly deploy immersive video experiences across platforms, combining out of the box business model innovation through flexible monetization models, such as SVOD, TVOD, AVOD, and call to action models, backed by analytical insights to optimise and personalise the user experience.
Airbeem’s Unique Dashboard provides an agile application builder to manage, control and dynamically change user experience through native branded apps on major OTT devices including web, mobile, TV-connected devices, set top boxes, Apple TV, Roku, Smart TVs and gaming consoles.
Airbeem’s team brings years of video and TV experience and strong industry partnerships to offer a powerful SaaS based OTT solution backed by a customer success passion intrinsically linking them to the success of their customers video service.
