Tungle nabs $5M for calendar syncing tool

It’s a big day for digital scheduling startup Tungle. It not only announced a successful $5M first round of funding, but also the beta launch of its free scheduling software. The Montreal-based company offers a hosted application for coordinating meetings with groups of people across companies, platforms and calendaring software.

Commonwealth Capital Ventures, a new investor, led the round of funding, followed by JLA Ventures and Desjardins Venture Capital, which had kicked in a combined $1.5 million in seed money 18 months ago. Tungle plans to pour its new funds into marketing and further development.

The application syncs with the usual suspects — Outlook, Google Calendar and Apple iCal, and automatically updates a user’s schedule across all of his or her shared calendars to prevent double-booking. Like competitors Jiffle and TimeBridge, it helps users spot open blocks of time they have in common.

Currently, Tungle’s core product is free. It allows people to see others’ availability but no details about their appointments. Over the next 12 months the company expects to roll out premium features for an additional fee that would make more information viewable, tailor the product to specific users like recruiters, and let users reserve meeting space.