ScreenReach, maker of the Screach app and accompanying platform for creating interactive experiences on smartphones, has raised a second round of funding: £500,000 from Hotspur Capital Partners. This follows earlier investment from Tom Maxfield, a founder of Sage, shortly after ScreenReach graduated from the Difference Engine accelerator program. The new funds announced today will be used to “spearhead global growth”, says the Newcastle, UK-based company.
The Screach app – currently iPhone and Android – and ScreanReach platform is designed to make it easy for brands and developers to tie interactive smartphone experiences to other content, whether that be television programs, billboards and other digital signage. It uses its own XML-based development scripting language, known as ScreachXML, which promises a a write-once development process across multiple Screach-supported smartphone OSes.
As for the app itself, users enter a unique pin code to unlock those interactive two-way experiences such as games, quizzes etc., along with special offers and coupons. The app also uses the ‘check-in’ analogy along with awarding points and is able to track all of this interaction, therefore providing useful data to customers along the way.
One target for the ScreenReach platform is broadcasters who want to offer a so-called third screen experience, something that we’re seeing organically anyway with the rise of Twitter. And in fact, the Screach app has the ability to push updates out to Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare.
In terms of competitors, ScreenReach has plenty of cross-over and to varying degrees could be considered as competing with Foursquare itself, along with GetGlue, Miso and other location and object-based services.
Of note, having benefited from The Difference Engine, ScreenReach founder Paul Rawlings is now one of a hundred mentors of the newly launched Cambridge-based Springboard seed accelerator programme. Applicants to Springboard have until Sunday, 20th February to apply.