Jinni Closes $5 Million Round B lead by Belgacom and Tier-1 CE Manufacturer

TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jinni, the innovative new taste-and-mood based guide for movies and TV shows, today closed its series B funding round for $5 million. The round was led by two strategic investors: Belgacom and a Tier-1 connected-TV manufacturer. Venture capital firm DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures (which previously led Jinni’s Round A funding) also participated.

“Our partnership with Jinni perfectly fits with Belgacom’s strategic objectives in TV and entertainment”

Jinni now offers its award-winning taste-and-mood based video guide for integration with electronic TV guides. As television consumption habits shift to on-demand viewing across multiple screens, Jinni’s semantic guide helps users intuitively find new content to fit their moods and personal tastes. Jinni is the only service to offer a wide range of content discovery features including personalized recommendations and taste channels to find and discover TV shows and movies that match each user's unique 'entertainment personality'. Jinni's innovative user taste modeling also enables search / browse by taste and mood (e.g. “witty, criminal heroes” or “gross out humor, award winner”) and taste oriented social features. As consumers demand a more intuitive, personalized way to discover content available via the internet and broadcast channels, service providers and consumer electronics manufacturers can now offer Jinni-powered discovery and recommendations based on each viewer's unique tastes and moods.

“We’re delighted to have a leading consumer electronics manufacturer and Pay-TV service provider, as well as DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures, as investors,” said Yosi Glick, Jinni CEO and Co-founder. “Completing the Series B funding round allows us to focus on what we do best: Developing an innovative product that is designed to fundamentally improve the entertainment experience. We’re very happy to collaborate with Belgacom to bring Jinni’s intuitive video guide features to an international, multilingual audience,” said Glick. “The round B investors are leading innovators in creating the next-generation entertainment experience, across platforms and devices. We firmly believe that superior discovery features and personalization are key to creating this experience, and we’re fortunate to have strategic investors who share our vision.”

Belgacom is Belgium’s leading telecom operator. On Belgacom’s fast Internet, mobile and TV networks, Jinni’s guide will enable Belgacom’s multilingual French and Dutch-speaking customers to intuitively discover video content that fits their personal tastes and moods across the three screens and networks. Belgacom’s approach of choosing the discovery engine before beginning work on the user interface is an indication of the company’s commitment to innovation.

“Our partnership with Jinni perfectly fits with Belgacom’s strategic objectives in TV and entertainment,” said Michel Georgis, EVP Consumer Business Unit of Belgacom. “Technology is at its best when it is personalized and intuitively used by customers as with Jinni. Belgacom wants to leverage its broadband wireless and wireline networks for the benefit of all Belgian customers and provide them with more content and applications on all screens.”

Jinni’s content discovery solution was voted “Best Product Idea” at CableLabs earlier this year. Jinni also operates a free destination website, http://www.jinni.com, which includes semantic search, personalized recommendations, and social features, as well as integration with leading content providers for seamless discovery from Jinni over the catalogs of Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, LOVEFiLM, and more.

About Jinni Media, Ltd

Jinni is the first taste-and-mood based video guide. Using content genetics and user taste profiling, Jinni’s engine powers a uniquely intuitive, personalized experience that increases content consumption and reduces churn. The Jinni service is powered by the Entertainment Genome, containing thousands of genes that are assigned to each title to describe mood, style, plot, setting and more – a rich alternative to the usual genre language. New titles are automatically indexed via analysis of user reviews and synopses, using a proprietary Natural Language Processing solution.

Jinni is a Webby Awards honoree, a Red Herring 100 Europe winner, an OnHollywood 100 winner, a SXSW Web Awards nominee, a TechCrunch Europas nominee and was selected as the best movie recommendation engine by CNET and Lifehacker. To see our engine at work, visit www.jinni.com.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6562455&lang=en