Modu is raising a big round

One of the quirky stars of this year's Mobile World Congress, Modu, is apparently scoring a large round of funding, namely to the tune of $100m. The company adds to $20m funding previously raised from its founder Dov Moran (who had sold his previous business for $1.6bn to SanDisk), two Israeli funds, namely Genesis Partners and Gemini, and indeed SanDisk. The round values modu pre-money at $150m, which is healthy for an 18-month-old company but, according to the press, still $50m less of what Mr Moran had hoped to score.

Modu is an interesting concept that shrinks the key bit of the phone (including SIM card, address book, etc to a matchbox size, which then can be slipped into a variety of so-called "jackets", fancy phones that can be adapted to whichever occasion the user might find appropriate or indeed "mates", which enable other consumer electronics devices with the bliss of connectivity and the like.

The challenge may well be that the jackets and mates are supposed to be developed by third parties, and to convince enough players to do that (which is arguably required to create a compelling offering) might be the biggest challenge.

In time for Barcelona, Modu had announced a number of partnerships, including operators Vimpelcom (Russia), Cellcom (Israel) and TIM (Italy). Blaupunkt, GPS specialists Magellan Navigations and - again - SanDisk have apparently pledged support, too. On the content side, the world's largest music company Universal Music, navigation service provider TeleAtlas and a few more are in the mix.

I really do like it and I really hope that they'll pull it off. Somewhat clearly thought out of the box here, and that deserves praise!

Update: Modu has just received recognition of a Guinness World Record for the lightest mobile phone (at 40.1 grams and dimensions of 72.1mm x 37.6mm x 7.8mm).