Prime Ventures accounts for $20 million of VC takings for AppLift

Mobile games marketing business AppLift has closed its second major fundraising round of the year by securing a further $7 million.


Mobile games marketing business AppLift has closed its second major fundraising round of the year by securing a further $7 million.

London and Holland-based investor Prime Ventures has led a new funding round into AppLift, taking total commitments to $20 million (£12.4 million). 

Following a Series A transaction worth $13 million back in June, Prime Venture has gone back to its portfolio company to provide additional growth capital.

Founded in 2012 by Kaya Taner and Tim Koschella, AppLift has developed a service to aid mobile game advertisers in the acquisition of gamers.

With sizeable funds now in the bank, AppLift will look to hire new staff to help with technology innovation as well as product and business development. 

Taner, co-founder and CEO of AppLift, says that it only took a day after announcing the company’s first funding round for other investors to declare an interest in follow-on funding.

‘We spoke with several of them but finally decided to give the additional volume to Prime Ventures. We hare very happy with out collaboration and their contribution to our growth,’ he adds.

AppLift has bases in Berlin, Seoul as well as San Francisco and will now continue with the development of its optimisation technology for customers such as Wooga and EA.

To coincide with the top-up funding round, AppLift has recruited Henrik Harren and Stephen Chung from their positions as managing directors at Rocket Internet.

AppLift says that the two new hires will strengthen its offering in the Asian market, where Chung will be managing director, and provide more business expertise.

Roel de Hoop, partner at Prime Ventures, comments, ‘AppLift has over performed since our initial investment. The company has a world-class team in a fast-growing market.’

Part of the deal also sees a secondary towards AppLift’s majority shareholder HitFox Group, the mobile and online games business incubator where the start-up began life.

Hunter Ruthven

Bernard Williamson

Hunter was the Editor for GrowthBusiness.co.uk from 2012 to 2014, before moving on to Caspian Media Ltd to be Editor of Real Business.

Related Topics

Venture capital funding