Video sharing site brings fundraising total to €45m

French company Dailymotion has raised €17 million in a Series D funding round led by the French Sovereign Fund (FSI), an investment fund backed by the government and its Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations. The round brings its total funding raised to €45 million since its founding in 2005.

FSI committed €11 million to the company, whose video sharing website is second only to YouTube in terms of market share.

There really aren’t many websites worldwide that have 60 million unique users and 1 billion videos watched every month. Peter Baines

Returning investors in the round included Advent Venture Partners, AGF Private Equity, Atlas Venture and Partech International.

“We’ve been backers since 2007 and I think what makes it exciting is there’s a very large and growing audience,” Peter Baines, Advent’s lead partner on the deal, told PEO. “There really aren’t many websites worldwide that have 60 million unique users and 1 billion videos watched every month. There’s a real large and international audience.”

There’s also tangible proof the business model is working, he said, noting revenues have grown 35 percent year-over-year at a time when the broader advertising market is falling by an average of 15 percent. Meanwhile, potential obstacles to growth – bandwidth costs and litigation risks associated with sharing content – have been respectively reduced and dissipated, Baines said.

Asked about the company’s chances of moving in on YouTube’s marketshare, Baines said the firm “strongly believes there’s room for more than one player”.