UGOBE, Inc., (DEMO 06) developer of the desktop dinosaur robot Pleo, has closed a $12.5 million Series C funding round lead by Hyield Venture Capital, a division of giant Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group. Added to its $2.75 million Series A from Frontier Management Group of Shanghai, China led by Chauncey Shey, and $8.5 million from Maxima Capital, headed by Max Fang, who started the Asia operations for Dell, UGOBE has raised a total of $24 million.
Foxconn is also gearing up to build Pleos and future Ugobe lifeforms as the company's second manufacturing partner, said UGOBE CEO Bob Christopher. UGOBE is "working on more than a few" new lifeforms, he said. The new funding will support marketing, a push into retail stores worldwide, and to scale up operations to achieve revenue goals, Christopher said.
The Emeryville company earlier this year reached positive cash flow with sales of Pleo, designed to evoke emotions from owners, said Christopher. The $350 blue-eyed Pleo, assembled as sophisticated Jetta Manufacturing plants in Lungwa and Panyu, China, is targetted at audiences from "tweens" to adults 30 to 40 years old on the premise that some they desire "living relationships" with technology.
Earlier this year the company outlined plans to broaden its marketing to a year-round push so sales would not be concentrated around year-end holidays. While it now sells Pleo at on-line stores owned by Target, Wal-Mart and Amazon, the company is talking with Target, Best Buy, and others about translating the company's online Pleo community experience into the retail environment, Christopher said.
"We want to take an Apple approach around user experience so there's a fluid relationship between the online community and the product to enthrall users past the few weeks of (Pleo) ownership," Christopher said.
Christopher likens UGOBE to an animation film studio because its technology focus is on content, play patterns, and characters.
Recently, the company upgraded the robot dinos' software and plans to release a Pleo development kit later this year, a spokesperson said.
In late May, UGOBE named Steve Bannerman as vice president of global marketing. Bannerman is a former vice president of marketing and product management for Narus, Inc., a telecommunications infrastructure software company acquired by Sun Microsystems. Bannerman also worked for Apple, Inc. marketing QuickTime TV and for CastStream marketing e-learning applications.
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