Malmo-based Crunchfish took in three million kronor (320 000 euro) investment from Anders Blomkvist, former President of Skanska Byggvaror, making him company co-owner, reports 8till5. The money will be allocated towards the development of a new service – proximity-based connectivity software between users.
The new application is called aBubbl, and it opens up for dynamic social interaction between people nearby where new connections can be discovered, groups created and content shared. Today aBubbl allows to share pictures or contact information between multiple phones. The information is shared either in a private mode where the phones must be about ten centimeters from each other or in a position that makes it possible to share information with selected people within two-three meters.
Crunchfish has invested into proximity solutions for over a year and has already eight pending patent ideas within this area, adding to an additional eight allowed patents within touchless interaction, stated in company’s official press release. The new capital will allow to draw clearer devision between the two busienss areas – aBubbl and Touchless A3D, company’s earlier product, software that allows to control mobile phones and tablets with the hand movements from the distance of several meters.
“We needed to speed up the development process as there is a window of opportunity now since when we see that this technology is hot”, shares Joakim Nydemark, CEO at Crunchfish.
Music streaming is a particularly interesting area to develop the technology around, for example, for things like sharing of playlists. Crunchfish has another patent pending in this area.
“Guests coming to a party would be able to influence the host’s playlist to certain extent and contribute with their own music. You can also turn it around and let DJs share their playlists, making them exclusive to people at the concert.”
Crunchfish has twenty employees and four of them will work on development of the technology. This is the second significant funding for Crunchfish during the past year. Back in November 2014 Crunchfish raised 3 million euro from American angel investor.
