Wallace Pai, Motorola Mobility: Onavo Closes $10M Series B Round

January 25, 2012

Onavo has secured $10 million in Series B funding. Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm of Mr. Li Ka-shing, led the investment along with Motorola Mobility Ventures, the strategic equity investment arm of Motorola Mobility. Previous investors Sequoia Capital and Magma Venture Partners also participated in the round. Jason Wong from Horizons Ventures has joined Onavo’s board of directors as part of the round.

Onavo, which offers free apps to stretch data plans and save on mobile data costs, plans to use the additional funds to continue to expand its product offering and reach. The Onavo iOS app, which compresses mobile data by up to 80%, and the Onavo Android app, which includes crowdsourced information on each app to warn of data hogs, have been hugely popular since launching in 2011, saving mobile users more than 5 million dollars in data charges.

Jason Wong of Horizons Ventures commented, “Mobile data use continues to grow exponentially, which creates issues for carriers and consumers alike. With that backdrop, we believe Onavo's unique data compression solution will prove compelling to both carriers and consumers.”

Wallace Pai, vice president of Corporate Development for Motorola Mobility and Executive Managing Director of Motorola Mobility Ventures, added, “We were impressed by the simplicity and effectiveness of Onavo’s mobile apps, which address a real problem for billions of consumers – the cost of data. We are very excited about joining Horizons Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Magma Venture Partners in investing in this very promising company, which we believe provides an elegant solution as consumers increasingly use mobile data in their everyday lives.”

Onavo co-founder and CEO Guy Rosen commented, “The cost of data is an issue for mobile users and carriers all over the world. As the leading service to help consumers get more out of their data plans, we are thrilled to bring on board leading partners from both Asia and the US, and to have the ongoing support of our existing investors.”