Personera raises $1.4M, teams with Appbistro

The personalized merchandise startup provides customized digital and print products for brands' fans

Personera, a technology platform that creates personalized digital and print products for Facebook users, announced Tuesday that it has closed a $1.4 million Series A round from Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa. The primary contributor to the round is Dr. Hasso Plattner, co-founder of enterprise software giant SAP. The latest round of capital brings Personera's total raised to $1.62 million. 

"The capital will be used to fund global sales, product launch and marketing initiatives, growing Personera's team in the USA, and expanding Personera's product range," said Personera CEO Sheraan Amod. 

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, Personera is a free app that brands can install on their Facebook pages to offer fans the chance to order personalized products built around their social networks. The startup's flagship product is "Your Calendar," a customized calendar plotting your Facebook friends' birthdays. Brands have the benefit of being able to advertise (for example, in the larger image space on the calendar page) while also providing personalized dates, birthdays, and images in the calendar page.

Brands can offer a free or paid downloadable PDF file of Your Calendar for fans, or fans can order a printed wall-version for $19.95. Brands get a 25% cut of all sales generated via the brands' fan pages. And Personera works on a per-sale basis, so there are no set-up fees. 

To spread its footprint, Personera has also partnered with popular app marketplace Appbistro to allow fanpage administrators to plug the app directly into their pages. Appbistro has created more than 100 fan apps on Facebook and has seen some 50,000 business app installs among its 40,000 active users.

“Personera has built a great application that allows brands and small businesses the ability to monetize in a very creative way; through offering a personalized products platform," said Appbistro CEO Ryan Merket. "We're excited to partner with them and bring this offering to our users.”

Personera's clients currently include Fitness Magazine, Shape, Woolworths, Taste, a number of magazines with Southern Hemisphere publisher Media24, and the company is currently in talks with several NFL teams, major US bands, and celebrities.

Image source: Personera.com