MobileNest

iSkoot, a start-up based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, secured $7 million in Series B financing for its software for mobile Skype calling.

In recent months, iSkoot has entered into a co-marketing and development partnership with Skype, and landed its first mobile carrier for its Skype-to-mobile service. iSkoot targeted its PC-to-mobile plug-in at Skype’s PC-based VoIP service. iSkoot has become the leader in mobile VoIP solutions, with its software pre-loaded onto Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets.

“We believe that a mobile solution for Internet calls will become a major new way for people to communicate, and iSkoot is at the vanguard of this movement. The iSkoot management team has deep industry knowledge and a long and successful entrepreneurial track record in streaming digital media; we bought into the team’s mission to free Internet calling from the PC and make it ubiquitous,” said Izhar Armony, general partner, Charles River Ventures. “iSkoot offers mobile operators a field-tested solution and a powerful new way to communicate, by allowing them to participate in the exploding volume of Internet calls. We look forward to working with iSkoot management to bring more visionary mobile products to this very promising market.”

iSkoot Founder and CEO Jacob Guedalia said, “This investment from Charles River Ventures and our returning investors validates iSkoot’s vision and execution. We look at Skype as a company that showed the world a new way of calling. We would like iSkoot to be known as the company that brought Internet calling to all mobile phones. We will continue to work with mobile operators and handset manufacturers to bring more mobile phone models to market preloaded with iSkoot software to enable ubiquitous mobile-to-PC calling. By embedding iSkoot in their handsets, mobile operators can satisfy user demand for Skype and expand average revenue per user, a clear win-win situation.”

“Changes in traditional communications will accelerate over the next decade” said Vinod Khosla, partner, Khosla Ventures. “iSkoot’s approach addresses a huge market opportunity to leverage these advances and at the same time make communications simpler and easier for consumers.”

The round was led by Charles River Ventures and includes previous investors Khosla Ventures, ZG Ventures, and Jesselson Capital Corp. This financing follows a previous a $6.2 million Series A round of funding, bringing funding to a total of $13.2 million in the past year.