London's mobile marketing shop Somo scrapes in $5.5M

It appears that we haven’t tired of “mobile” and “solutions” yet, and neither have investors.

Mobile technology and marketing (and “solutions”) shop Somo just brought in $5.5 million in follow-on funding from MMC Ventures’ London Fund and other investors.

“Since taking the investment last year, Somo has grown by more than 100 percent, having hired 60 additional staff … while attracting several new clients including De Beers, British Gas, and Tesco,” the company said in an statement.

“In addition, Somo has worked to develop its market-leading mobile advertising solutions and enterprise grade mobile platforms including the new mobile app tracking product Lithient App Tracker,” it added.

Headquartered in London, the company provides a variety of mobile technology services, ranging from custom-made mobile apps to marketing and advertising services.

The MMC Ventures’ London fund is actually overseen by the Mayor of London and “intended to support the growth of London-based businesses,” according to a statement.

This isn’t the first we’ve seen from the London city government in terms  of interest in technology investing. The city’s deputy mayor, Christopher “Kit” Malthouse, recently visited Silicon Valley to meet with executives from companies such as Yelp and TaskRabbit, as well as spending time with health-tech companies in preparation for the launch of “Med City,” a sister organization to “Tech City,” the U.K.’s possibly failing attempt to nurture local tech companies, as we reported.

It should be interesting to see if further investments linked to the mayor’s office also continue in the direction of mobile technologies such as Somo despite Malthouse’s commitment to health-tech startups.

Somo was founded in 2009 by Nick Hynes and Carl Uminski and now has additional offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Singapore, and Berlin.