Blippar Raises $45 Million in Funding

NEW YORK, NY and LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - Mar 9, 2015) - Blippar, the world's largest augmented reality and image-recognition platform, today announced a $45 million funding round. The industry leading technology company will leverage this new financing to expand its engineering team and extend the global reach of its image-recognition capabilities in order to further realize its mission to create a visual search engine for the physical world.

"This is a pivotal time for the image-recognition industry," said Ambarish Mitra, Blippar Founder and CEO. "While the digital advertising and marketing communities have been quick to capitalize on the potential of our technology to engage audiences with branded experiences, we have barely scratched the surface in terms of the potential impact that our technology can bring to other industries, particularly education, healthcare and charities. This funding brings us closer to our ultimate goal of creating a new kind of cognitive behavior, one that enables us to instantaneously access information and content directly from any of the physical objects or collateral in the world around us."

Today Blippar partners with many of the world's largest and most influential consumer brands -- Coca-Cola, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Pepsi, Nestlé -- to deliver engaging augmented reality and image-recognition experiences. Brand campaigns feature unique digital content that is unlocked instantaneously from physical triggers including billboards, products, logos and magazine pages when scanned or 'blipped' via the Blippar app.

Following its acquisition of Layar in 2014, Blippar has pioneered a new behavior and has seen exponential user adoption, amassing a global user base of over 50 million people with over 1.5 billion blippable interactions. Blippar's operations have expanded to represent more than 200 employees across ten international offices in US, Europe and Asia.

Blippar's previous investors include Qualcomm Ventures and Landsowne Partners.

About Blippar
Blippar™ is the leading image-recognition platform for brands, advertisers, and publishers, instantly bringing physical newspapers, magazines, products, signage and merchandising to life. Utilizing proprietary, best-in-class technology, Blippar™ enables users to unlock the physical world with stunning interactive, digital content experiences and engage with their favorite publications, brands and celebrities via their iOS, Android, or Windows mobile devices. Since launching in the UK in 2011, Blippar™ has expanded rapidly, partnering with some of the biggest and most exciting media owners and brands in the world -- including Condé Nast, TIME Inc., Unilever, Kraft, Nestlé, Heinz, Coca-Cola, Anheuser Busch, Xbox, L'Oréal, Universal Pictures and Jaguar. To learn more, visit blippar.com.