Lekiosk raises 5.6M€ to go international

Lekiosk, the self-professed ‘World’s first 3D newstand’, has just announced that they closed a series B round, raising 2.85M€ from CM-CIC (who also invested in Deezer) and 2.75M€ from CDC Entreprises (Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations). They plan to leverage their newly raised funding to extend their geographic reach beyond France and (recently launched) UK and Italy to become the European leader in their sector by 2015, increase their investment in R&D, and expand the number of magazine titles in their portfolio.
Thus far, Lekiosk has had an impressive and successful evolution in France.  Having started in 2007, they are on-track to grow their revenues 400% year-on-year to 6M€ this year and expect to be profitable in 2014.  They can also boast of having acheived 700k downloads since launching in 2011 (they’re present on 1 in 4 iPads in France), 100k regular pay-per magazine users, 30k monthly subscribers (10€ for 10 magazines),  and the highest grossing iPad app in France in 2011.  The fact that they have gotten so many consumers to pay for this content in a digital format is in itself an impressive feat, particularly given that the media sector has, for the most part, be struggling for years on this point. Given this success, they’ve been able to establish strong credibility within the press community and, as a result, have attracted 600 publications on their platform, including several from high-quality media outlets/publishers such as the BBC, Conde Nast, and Lagadère.
Another strong point of their app is that it’s cross-platform and, according to TechCrunch, will also include Windows 8 in the very near future. So, as the tablet market continues to expand beyond iPads, Lekiosk is well-postitioned to rapidly capitalize on this trend.
As mentioned by Lekiosk co-founder Michel Phillipe during a recent interview with Frenchweb.fr, one of their biggest challenges in implementing their European expansion strategy will be dealing with the high-level of fragementation of press organizations / publishers across Europe.  However, as they’ve been able to build a portfolio of such prestigious publications and now have the sufficient funds to properly invest in their exansion, their job of securing high-quality content from potential partners has just become a whole lot easier.