Berlin-based mobile geo-social network Aka-Aki has raised a second venture funding round to fund its long-hoped-for planned international expansion.
The service, which uses Bluetooth to do location-aware proximity networking and is also available in English, started as a mere university diploma project but, in August 2008, hired proper staff to work on it full-time.
It already raised some money from Creathor Venture in July 2008. Creathor is back, joined by Paris’ Innovacom, for a second round of “several million euros”; the detail isn’t disclosed but the amount is “bigger” than the first. Aka-Aki’s eight founders retain the largest proportion of equity. The funds will go toward “accelerating the growth of the service and the internationalisation of the successful aka-aki idea”.
Aka-Aki is actually one of the leading mobile social networks in Germany, ranking highly in iTunes’ App Store there. Founder and CEO Stefanie Hoffman told me back in March of a hope to break out of Germany alone, but that hasn’t really happened yet for Aka-Aki’s ex art school types (see the crazy demo video) and the competition in mobile geo-social features is gathering.