$15m investment in Enition

Enition, a company developing a billing and payment system for the sale of Internet content, has closed a second funding round of $15 million. SOFTBANK Europe Ventures, a new investor in Entition, led the round, which included Nokia Venture Partners and previous investors Cisco Systems, Reuters Venture Capital Greenhouse Fund and Galileo Partners. This financing will provide the company with the resources to market its principal product, NetToll, globally. The company plans to expand in Europe, North America and Asia.

John Gardner, partner of Nokia Venture Partners, says: “Having already attracted sharp interest among major telecom operators in its enabling technology, we believe NetToll is destined to become one of the major components of the Internet ecosystem…and one of the cornerstones of the Internet business infrastructure, especially for the mobile Internet.”

Enition was founded in 1999 and received seed funding in July 2000. It is headquartered in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, outside Paris and has an office in California. The management team has gained experience at Alcatel, Bell Canada, MatraNet, Nortel Networks and Sun Microsystems. In addition to the completion of this funding round Enition has also appointed a new chairman and CEO. Normand Tremblay, previously VP of sales for Bell Canada, replaces Jean-Luc Leleu as CEO. Leleu, the company’s founder and the inventor of the NetToll technology, is now chief strategy officer.

NetToll, Enition’s monetisation platform, was launched in April this year. According to James Stuart, managing director of SOFTBANK Europe Ventures, it addresses a significant need in the market and opens the way for new business models. NetToll enables content providers and distributors and network service providers to price and sell their digital content and services over the Internet. It measures the usage of digital content and services, based on time, volume or access, and ensures secure payment. The technology works across any type of network access: analogue, broadband or wireless. Markets that will benefit from the additional profitability opportunities this affords include business information services, entertainment, e-learning, ASP services and digital storage.