Peel Secures $16.7 Million in Series B Financing

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Peel, the company that provides a personal television recommendation system to find, discover and tune in to your favorite TV shows, movies and sports entertainment, today announced it has secured a $16.7 million Series B round of financing. The deal was led by Ravi Mhatre from Lightspeed Venture Partners based in Menlo Park, California. The Series B funding will enable the company to move forward with additional retail opportunities for the Peel device, as well as for expansion of the Peel application for additional mobile platforms and content sources.

"Peel is at the forefront of a profound shift in how people watch television and we are proud to be a part of the Peel team," said Ravi Mhatre of Lightspeed Venture Partners. "Peel is the 21st century way to interface with TV. It enables discovery, control and sharing of living room entertainment in a very slick and simple way. It will revolutionize how entertainment is consumed in the living room."

Founded in 2009, Santa Clara-based Peel previously raised its Series A investment with Redpoint Ventures, known for its successful endeavors in consumer entertainment and interactive media including Netflix and TiVo. Satish Dharmaraj from Redpoint led the Series A round. Michael Dearing from Harrison Metal led Peel's Seed round, along with Mitch Kapor from Kapor Capital and Steve Anderson from Baseline Ventures. Several of these Seed investors, along with Redpoint Ventures participated with Lightspeed in the Series B round.

"The passion, vision and opportunity we saw in Peel emphasized a clear fit for Redpoint's original investment and we were excited to participate again in this new round. The momentum we see in Peel points to other companies, like Netflix and TiVo, that we've seen change the landscape of entertainment. Great things are ahead," said Satish Dharmaraj of Redpoint Ventures.

Peel eliminates the need for complicated TV listings, multiple remotes and the hassle of switching component inputs. The Peel "fruit" seamlessly controls the entire entertainment system including your TV, cable box, Blu-ray player, AV receiver, Apple TV, Roku and more.

The free Peel iPhone and iPod touch® app is a highly rated app in the iTunes App Store. It recommends TV programming to users, based on their personal preferences. The more a user interacts with the Peel app, the more tailored their programming recommendations become. Users discover new shows, search for favorites and share what they're watching. Adding the Peel 'fruit', available at Apple retail and online stores, allows a user to touch a show on the Peel app and instantly begin watching that show. The Peel system interacts directly with all your content sources and all your devices, making it the first converged solution for the living room that is truly content-source and device agnostic.

About Peel

Peel was founded around passion for making the home entertainment experience friendlier. Combining program discovery, simple and seamless universal control and shared entertainment experiences steps beyond simple remote controls and changes the TV landscape. For more information visit http://www.Peel.com.

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SOURCE Peel