Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Apalya Technologies, a leader in interactive, on demand Mobile TV services in India, has raised USD 7.5 million in Series B funding. Apalya plans to use the funds to broaden its portfolio of services and technology platform to leverage the vast mobile TV opportunity being presented by the upcoming large scale rollout of 3G services in India.

The investment in Apalya was led by Bangalore based IndoUS Venture Partners (IUVP), a leading venture capital firm. IUVP is a first time investor in Apalya Technologies. With this investment Ms Vani Kola will take a board seat in Apalya Technologies.

“With its unique Mobile TV Technology, Apalya is already making waves in the mobile VAS industry in India, the fastest growing mobile market across the globe. The widespread launch of 3G services in India has the potential to make the mobile screen a dominant live streaming based infotainment and advertising platform with Apalya as the central player,” says Ms Vani Kola, Managing Director, IndoUS Venture Partners.

Existing investors IDG and Qualcomm also participated in the Series B financing thus affirming their faith in long term exponential growth of Apalya. Apalya’s Mobile TV viewership has grown to 4 Million Subscribers after receiving the first round of investment.

During the same period, Apalya partnered with more than 100 television channels including Discovery, Disney and Sony. Apalya also tied up with Reliance communications and Tata Teleservices for delivering mobile TV solutions for their 3G services launch.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

If you looking for some free stuff like mp3, movies etc on the internet you are inviting trouble, McAfee has published in its recent report such searches and subsequent downloads lets virus and malware invade your system.

It is found that prefixing the word “free” in software, MP3s, videos to searches increases the risk of landing on a malicious site. McAfee also revealed that cybercriminals hide malicious content in music and movie-related sites, and even fan clubs sites. The research found that adding the word “free” to a search for music ringtones resulted in a 300 percent increase in the riskiness of sites returned by major search engines in English.

Searching for “MP3s” added risk to music search results, while searching for “free MP3s” made those searches even riskier. Even when a consumer indicated that they wanted to pay for the MP3 in their search, results still sent them to pirated content.

Malicious advertising or “malvertising,” where an ad is used to distribute malware or exploit the user’s browser, is a common means of infection.

How to remain safe -

• Try to avoid searching searching for “free” content. Look for reliable content provider preferably a paid site.
• Avoid clicking on links in banner ads on music, movie and download sites that aren’t well-established
• Use common sense: Beware while clicking on links posted in forums or on fan pages, Better avoid it.
• Realize that the more popular a topic, movie or artist is, the more risky the search results.
• Use a quality antivirus software.