Ja-ching: Telefonica buys Jajah for $207M

Deal yields solid return for investors, demonstrates the power of white-labeling

Spanish telecom Telefónica today announced the acquisition of internet phone company Jajah for $145 million euros ($207 million) in an all-cash transaction.

Jajah lets users of social services call each other without revealing their actual phone numbers, and without being tied to a PC.

The service is similar to Skype and Google Voice, but rather than go direct to consumer and battle it out with those big boys, Jajah’s founders went the white-label route. Last year, it took over Yahoo’s Voip service, then got integrated into Microsoft’s business products. This summer, worked its way into eHarmony and Match.com, enabling would-be love interests to talk without giving up their digits, and in October, the company made a simple and smart marketing move by letting Twitter users call their followers from within the Twitter environment. Tweet a follower’s name to @call, and you’re connected in seconds (provided you both sign up for the service).

That's quite a handshaking marathon.

As Larry Lisser points out, Jajah’s partnerships boosted its perceived value in very little time. Those deals provided instant credibility and turned Jajah into the go-to solution for calling any of your online “connections” without revealing your number.

Jajah was founded in 2005 by two Austrians, Daniel Mattes and Roman Scharf, who set up development in Israel and moved their headquarters to Silicon Valley. It raised $33 million from Sequoia Capital, Deutsche Telekom, Intel Capital, and others, which means investors reeled in a 6.2x return overall a good chunk of change (see Shai's clarification below). That should help Sequoia’s fundraising efforts.