Pitango, Israel’s largest VC injected $12 million into Worklight, the enterprise 2.0 Israeli startup. Pitango was joined by previous investors Genesis Partners, Index Ventures and Shlomo Kramer, a world renowned security expert and Imperva CEO.
Worklight develops and markets a line of server products that consumerize the orporate computing experience by making popular consumer services like iGoogle, MS Live, Netvibes, and Facebook “enterprise-ready.” It brings a great benefit to thousands of corporate employees who are currently blocked from using web 2.0 applications, for the sake of secutrity precaution or firewalls. Through WorkLight, employees and consumers connect to protected enterprise data (and to each other) using Web 2.0 services.
Proceeds from WorkLight’s series B round funding will be used to further expand its presence in North America, Europe and Asia, substantiating the company’s vision for the consumerized workplace. Worklight was founded in 2006 by CEO Shahar Kaminitz and Yuval Tarsi with an initial round of $5.1 million.
In the official press release, Shahar Kaminitz said:
“For the new generation of employees entering the corporate world, life without consumer internet tools is simply inconceivable. For this reason, it’s absolutely essential that organizations offer employees the same tools that they are already using in their personal lives, without compromising business-critical security. This latest funding round will allow us to expand our offerings for enterprises worldwide, and in North America and Europe in particular.”
Worklight has enjoyed some momentum recently, and was named on of the “Five Enterprise 2.0 Startups toWatch,” by InformationWeek magazine. Let’s hope that they can keep it going long enough to get critical mass.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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