Online Backup Service Kabooza Gets SEK 7 Million
Swedish online backup service Kabooza has gotten SEK 7 Million (EUR 0,65M; USD 0,84M) investment from Aggregate Media, a Swedish VC fund. The money will be used in marketing Kabooza's online backup service through various media. Aggregate Media invests in smaller and middle-sized companies in Sweden who have a big potential in the consumer market and benefit from getting a bigger marketing budget.
Kabooza offers unlimited storage for personal files and photos, providing a simple backup service, which automatically copies the defined files from the local computer to the firm's secure servers. Despite the unlimited storage there is a max limit of 25 GB upload per month per user (Update: this was apparently just a beta version limitation and has been removed). The users are able to access the files remotely over the Internet as well. In addition, the company offers a possibility to generate online photo albums directly in the same service. The albums look nice with ability to comment the pictures, though it is nothing special. The service is only available for Windows XP and Vista for now.
Kabooza offers the service with a subscription, starting from 1 year at USD 49.95 up until 5 years at USD 199.95. Not that costly for unlimited storage, but then again not having any free trial period, and asking straight to sign up for one full year might turn off potential customers (Update: there is a 100-day money back guarantee, though.). However, Kabooza may be aiming to sell the service directly via ISP's and other service providers, since in the registration process it is possible to enter an 'activation code', which can be gotten from 'resellers'.
Aggregate Media's operating pricinple sounds interesting: according to the website, the holding company has four different funds owned by around ten greater media companies. So, the media companies make investments into the startups, get equity share, and then the startups spend the investments on the media companies' media space. How sweet is that? [Of course, I might be missing some details...]
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If you would like a similar solution with a trial and no 25 gb cap that's also available for mac i recommend checking out backblaze.com
[...] I’m seriously doubtful if there’s room for yet another one, but Kabooza is a relatively new online backup service which just raised 7 million Sweden Kronor or $840,000 in seed funding from Swedish VC firm Aggregate Media, reports ArcticStartup. [...]
[...] for the Windows alone and Mc/linux users have to wait until they release it for them. It recently raised $840,000 from Aggregate Media a Swedish VC firm. Previous [...]
Also Mozy offers 5 dollars/month service for unlimited backup (same as backBlaze). What I have read both of these services have some customers to back them up and I'm really considering using this kind of a service or custom build S3 based which could be even cheaper.
What bothers me with Kabooza is the lack of Mac client. Does a startup really have a change of getting popular without one because early adopters tend to use macs nowdays and it's important to create a buzz? But then again no trial and possible reseller/ISP business is around Windows.
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