Kony Solutions Inc., provider of a platform that helps companies launch commerce-enabled mobile applications, has landed $19.1 million in Series A financing from investment firm Insight Venture Partners.

The funds will help the company expand its research and development to continually update the Kony Mobile Application Platform. In addition, Kony will use the funding to accelerate the global rollout of Kony’s sales and marketing initiatives.

“Our new collaboration with Insight will help us expand our reach globally, while also further advancing our products and services for our customers,” said Raj Koneru, CEO of Kony Solutions, San Mateo, CA. “The initial tranche of $13.4 million will enable us to expand our research and development related to the Kony Mobile Application Platform, which serves millions of users worldwide.

“We’re continuing to expand aggressively, with a concentration on the North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America markets,” he said. “In fact, we already have several customers with offerings available in more than 46 countries.

“We’ll also increase the breadth of our service offerings across new verticals, continuing to expand our reach across new industries and market segments.”

Using a single application definition, Kony Solutions powers applications that are designed and developed just once in a device-independent manner and deployed across multiple channels, including native applications, device-optimized mobile Web sites, SMS, Web gadgets, desktop applications and tablets.

Kony looks to grow
The Kony claims that its Mobile Application Platform supports more than 8,500 mobile devices, tablets and operating systems, including truly native applications for the iPad, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, J2ME, Windows Phone 7 and Palm devices.

In addition, Kony’s platform also supports device-optimized mobile Web sites for more than 15 browsers such as Apple Safari, Google Chrome and Firefox, with support from WML through HTML5, depending on browser capabilities and device form factors.

United Airlines, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. and a global financial services company with presence in more than 46 countries are among the 35 Fortune 500 global companies that use Kony Solutions for the development, deployment and maintenance of their mobile offerings.

“We’re continuing to expand across the travel, media, retail, automotive, insurance, healthcare and financial services markets,” Mr. Koneru said.

Mobile commerce is certainly still growing and expanding, and the challenge for companies is how they can fit into the overall ecosystem, per Kony.

The company has made several predictions for 2011 regarding the mobile space and mobile commerce.

“We believe that not only will it be crucial for companies to have a comprehensive mobile strategy across a wide variety of platforms, but that they will also need to incorporate advanced technologies such as augmented reality, LBS, etcetera,” Mr. Koneru said.

“It is important that companies start planning a long-term mobile strategy now in order to harness the potential of mobile commerce today, especially in what is becoming a very competitive mobile landscape,” he said.

“Most importantly, companies need to ‘future-proof’ their mobile investment by using a single application definition to offer a comprehensive mobile offering to customers now, while also enabling them to prepare for the introduction of future mobile technologies.”

Final Take
No store left behind