(12 May 2007 5:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Joost, the world's first broadcast-quality internet television service, has attracted investments of $45 million from five selected parties.

This funding will enable Joost to accelerate product development, global expansion, localization, and service offerings.

"We've carefully selected these investors from a variety of interested parties, as they are best-in-class in their respective arenas and bring unique assets to Joost that will enable us to significantly accelerate growth and development of the company," said Joost co-founder Janus Friis.

Index Ventures, an European venture capital firm which invests in impactful technologies that have global reach, led the round with Sequoia Capital.

Index Ventures general partner Danny Rimer said, "We are excited to be working with Niklas and Janus once again as we see the same ground-breaking potential in Joost that we saw in Skype.

"By leveraging proven P2P architecture and assembling a world class management team, they have made a powerful idea simple and brought new services to market in record time. Our investment in Joost signals Index Ventures continued commitment to investing in impactful technologies."

Roelof Botha, general partner, Sequoia Capital, added, "Feature length video on the Internet has been long on promise and short on delivery for some time. Full screen commercial content delivered online has simply not been compelling for the viewer and has been far too costly for the content owners."

Joost allows content owners to reach audiences of any size at any time where the viewer can "lean back" to enjoy an immersive yet interactive video experience.

At the same time, Joost enables brand marketers to efficiently deliver precisely targeted and measurable advertisements.

Hutchison Whampoa Limited chairman Li Ka-shing has invested in Joost through his charitable foundation, the Li Ka Shing Foundation.

LLi Ka-shing stated, "We were excited about the opportunity to invest in Niklas and Janus. With the quality, content, speed and usability of Joost's platform, and the community-targeted service offerings, we expect Joost will revolutionize the Internet television market."

In addition to its investment, CBS has contributed more than 2000 hours of CBS entertainment, sports and news programming.

Entertainment programming offered includes the full CSI franchise, Survivor, NCIS, Numbers and Fat Actress, news content includes the CBS evening news with Katie Couric, Face the nation, clips form the Eastly show, 48 hours, and CBS Sunday morning and sports content includes College football highlight show, NFL today hot topic, Game of the week, One2one and Go pro or go home.

Also an investor in the round, Viacom is a "Key Launch Partner" providing channels and programming from across all of its properties including: Comedy Central, MTV, VH1 and Paramount Pictures.

MTV will offer popular shows, both past and present, including Laguna Beach, Beavis & Butthead, Real World, Punk'd and My Super Sweet Sixteen, while Comedy Central will feature episodes from Stella, CCP's and Freak Show.

Also, Paramount Pictures will be providing full-length feature films from its catalogue of classics and recent releases.

Joost provides a new way of watching TV that combines the best of full-screen television entertainment with the interactive and community benefits of the Internet to bring broadcast-quality video to viewers anytime, anywhere.

Based on a state-of-the-art, secure, peer-to-peer streaming technology, Joost can be accessed with a broadband Internet connection and offers video content to viewers for free.

Joost features more than 150 channels with programming across all genres, including: cartoons and animation; entertainment and film; sports; comedy; lifestyle and documentaries; and sci-fi.

Channels and programs available on Joost vary by geographic region, based on copyright ownership.