OREANDA-NEWS. Cinarra Systems, today announced that it secured USD 20 million in Series B funding led by SoftBank Corp. ("SoftBank"), the Japan-based telecom subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. In addition, Cinarra has begun joint business operations in Japan with SoftBank, offering new opportunities for Japanese advertisers to engage with consumers. SoftBank has introduced the service to its network in Japan, operating a targeted advertising platform.

The new funding will allow Cinarra to grow its product engineering team and expand its business with operators globally. Joining the funding round is Almaz Capital, an early stage venture firm bridging technology talent from Eastern Europe with Silicon Valley, which led Cinarra's \\$4.5 million Series A round in 2013 along with Cisco Investments. Siguler Guff & Company, a multi-strategy private equity investment firm headquartered in New York, also participated in the Series B with an investment from the firm's dedicated technology fund.

By eliminating the complexities of integrating operator and advertising platforms - and addressing head-on the issue of consumer data privacy - Cinarra is creating the foundation for a more prosperous mobile economy for everyone involved. Tapping into vastly underutilized mobile operator data, Cinarra's mediation platform is the first to unlock new economic value for operators and advertisers around the world. This platform addresses full privacy protection considerations by using mobile operators' well-established security practices and Cinarra's privacy-preserving architecture.

"Our relationship with SoftBank signifies a fundamentally new phase for Cinarra," said Alex Zinin, co-founder and CEO of Cinarra. "With SoftBank's investment and partnership, we are in an excellent position to be the first to establish a global platform that is open for mobile operators and advertising platforms in Japan and around the world, enabling them to participate in a new business model that will drive the next phase of growth for the mobile Internet economy. With this foundation, the opportunities created by the platform will expand beyond the telecom and advertising industries."

Cinarra's mediation platform allows mobile operators to become active participants in the rapidly growing mobile advertising market - forecasted by Gartner to explode to \\$42 billion by 2017, quadrupling 2012's total. By working with Cinarra, advertisers can significantly improve ad relevancy and more effectively address their target audiences, thus increasing efficiency and performance of campaigns. However, the ultimate beneficiary of this next-generation model is the consumer who can now enjoy the new applications and services that it enables.

"Growing needs in mobile communication have propelled us into a new mobile Internet economy," said Ken Miyauchi, President & CEO of SoftBank. "The next phase of the industry evolution requires a new technology to leverage the 'always on' consumer lifestyle. Partnering with Cinarra, whose technology and direction align with our vision of a new Internet economy, is strategic to our business. We are confident that our investment and partnership will further enhance our services for customers."

Mobile operators are at the core of a technological and economic evolution, having made tremendous efforts and investments to deploy and maintain the infrastructure that keeps consumers connected. In conjunction with these efforts, they have actively been evolving into data warehouses holding extraordinary amounts of data capable of delivering an unprecedented depth of intelligence. However, despite repeated efforts, these operators have had very limited success working with other industries to capitalize on the data and create a successful business model that will enable the next phase of growth for the mobile Internet economy, while also delivering the necessary consumer benefits. By partnering with Cinarra, mobile operators can now utilize Cinarra's breakthrough technology to unite with the advertising world to enable a new generation of mobile applications and services.