Puma Private Equity completes Ostmodern investment
February 10, 2021
Puma Private Equity has completed a £2 million investment into Ostmodern, a digital product design and technology business that creates innovative video platforms for some of the world’s leading entertainment companies, including Formula One, Arsenal, Channel 4 and Fox.
Ostmodern has been at the forefront of innovation in digital product development for over 10 years. Projects have included creating a world-class streaming service that reconnected Formula One with younger audiences all over the world, blending content and data into an intuitive, enjoyable experience. It was F1’s first ever direct-to-consumer product, delivering live and on-demand race content, including all drivers’ on-board cameras, broadcast to 108 countries.
For Arsenal Football Club, the business designed and built a new suite of digital products to increase fan engagement. The resulting new desktop site, and mobile apps on iOS and Android, allow fans around the world to feel connected to the club during and outside games.
This investment from Puma Private Equity will allow Ostmodern to accelerate the growth of its Skylark Platform, build out the team through new hires and introduce exciting new product features.
Developed in-house, the unique Skylark Platform is the company’s CMS, VMS and API for content-first businesses. The company believes that Skylark is the only rich media platform that gives product owners total control over their product’s direction.
Tom Williams, CEO of Ostmodern, said: “It is great to have Puma Private Equity on board, a leading investor and a firm which understands the value of a strong brand and a company’s position within its marketplace. We feel the Puma team has real empathy for what we have achieved and the potential for our Skylark Platform. We all look forward to working with them closely in the future.
“The transformation of content engagement, already moving at a fast pace, has been dramatically accelerated by Covid-19. And with Skylark, which represents 15 years worth of knowledge of building the most innovative video platforms in the world, we have the ability to build a global ecosystem of partners to support our enterprise customers.
“The funding enables us to put in-place plans to set up our reseller channel and referral partner network. We will also recruit key personnel and significantly increase our workforce. This will help drive our business into a number of new industries and markets.”
Kelvin Reader, Investment Manager of Puma Private Equity, said of the investment: “We are delighted to be supporting Ostmodern’s strong management team as they draw on their longstanding experience in the industry to capitalise on the considerable growth of video-on-demand that we are seeing worldwide. With customer and end user experience becoming increasingly important in our new digital landscape, we look forward to seeing the team lead the way in the rich media market.”