More consolidation: YCD buys C-nario

October 27, 2011 by Dave Haynes

YCD Multimedia has announced the acquisition of C-nario, a pair of digital signage software companies with Israeli roots who you kinda thought might get hitched at some point.

“This step opens new horizons and creates tremendous opportunities for the consolidated company,” said Noam Levavi, CEO of YCD. “By combining YCD’s offering and expertise together with C-nario’s high-end digital signage technology, we take another major step toward achieving our vision of delivering personalization and measurement to brick-and-mortar environments.”

“This is an important step in C-nario’s growth and business strategy,” said Tamir Ginat, C-nario’s CEO. “Bringing together powerful market-leading technologies will enable us to offer our customers solutions that provide unrivaled capabilities and address current and future needs.”

The merger, which involves a stock swap, puts together a pair of companies with strong reputations on the technical side.

In the release, YCD said the combined entity will “deliver a robust end-to-end solution that encompasses everything from content management to measurement and analytics. This solution is designed to deliver a complete brand experience in the retail industry as well as in other market segments. As a result of the recent integration, the company will expand its reach to serve more than 2,000 brands, including leading Fortune 500 global brands, in over 40 countries worldwide.”

2,000 brands? Well, YCD says it has in excess of 1,500 customers, much of that in retail. Hmmm.

Noam Levavi, co-founder and CEO of YCD will continue to run the combined firm from YCD’s New York headquarters.

YCD also announced the closing of a new $6 million fundraising round, led by Carmel Ventures, Opus Capital, Pitango Venture Capital and Plenus, together with other existing shareholders.

“We are delighted to have assisted this transaction and to be able to invest in the combined entity,” said Avi Zeevi, C-nario’s Chairman and General Partner and Co-Founder of Carmel Ventures. “We can now combine the power of our individual strengths and core competencies to establish a leadership position in the digital signage industry. I would like to thank Tamir Ginat for leading C-nario to its current dominant position, and who was instrumental in making this transaction happen”.

“We plan to increase market share and broaden our coverage,” said Rami Kalish, YCD’s Chairman and Managing General Partner and Co-Founder of Pitango Venture Capital. “We see a tremendous number of business opportunities that we and our partners can effectively and efficiently target, and we plan to pursue those opportunities.”

This was a logical one, because of their roots and, presumably, cultural fit, not to mention both companies being technically strong in things like driving video walls. I don’t know the guys at C-nario, but know and like the YCD folks.

I am sure it will also be heartening for some other software guys to seeing some investors putting decent stacks of cash into a company.

Consolidation has been underway for a while now, but seems to be accelerating. Nothing like a lingering recession to get companies quietly talking to each other.

  1. DoohGuy says:

    This is interesting. Whereas Enqii/Minicom was a hardware + software marriage, YCD and CNario each have their own software that is in direct competition with each other.

    Meaning the merged company will have to maintain two separate platforms.

    Good luck with that.

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