SavaJe Technologies, the developer of an open, Java-based operating system for mobile phones, has announced that it has raised $40 million in equity financing led by Investcorp's Technology Ventures Fund II and joined by existing investors VantagePoint Venture Partners, Ridgewood Capital, RRE Ventures, and Vodafone Ventures. T. Raj Singh, a Partner in Investcorp's Technology Investment Group, will join the SavaJe Board of Directors in connection with the financing. Investcorp is a global investment group that, in addition to technology venture capital, has three other business lines: private equity, real estate investment, and hedge funds.

SavaJe will use the new capital to enhance its sales and marketing resources, building on the recent appointment of Lamar Potts, former VP of PalmSource, as Senior VP of Business Development.

"A significant influencing factor in Investcorp's decision to invest was the recent announcement from LG Electronics that it has completed development of SavaJe's OS on a reference LG handset", said Savio W. Tung, Head of Technology Investment at Investcorp. "We are excited by SavaJe's prospects in the mobile phone market, where we believe it is poised for significant growth."

"SavaJe is at the beginning of its transition from a technology-orientated company to a global customer-focused operation," said Gregory Koss, Chief Executive Officer for SavaJe. "Our position is strengthening rapidly: the capability of our OS has been endorsed by LG Electronics; we have a hard-hitting executive team; we are aggressively ramping up our sales and marketing resource; and, we have the backing of an influential group of investors."

A July 2005 report on Mobile Platforms by Dr. Richard Windsor from Nomura Equity Research highlights the need for a highly flexible architecture combined with a great user experience. The report cites these factors as crucial to the success of new and emerging mobile software platforms in an increasingly segmented market, where customers are demanding a better user experience. The Nomura report projects strong growth arising from a combination of falling costs and smarter devices.

"SavaJe is well placed to take advantage of the projected growth in the mobile platform market, meeting the need for a flexible operating system with an exceptional user experience," said George Grey, President and Chief Operating Officer for SavaJe. "The Company offers operators, Mobile Virtual Network Operators, and manufacturers a fully customizable and brandable User Experience, while maintaining full applications compatibility with strong security features across different handset implementations. The scalability of the platform is designed to meet the ongoing demands of mid to high tier consumer feature phone designs.

Manufacturers and operators can easily customize the UI and integrate new applications and services, using a core platform that has been tested and certified, thereby significantly reducing cost and time to market."