Vuclip, a mobile video search and delivery startup has raised $6 million in a Series B round of funding led by Jafco Ventures, with existing investor New Enterprise Associates also investing in the company. Vuclip has a significant presence in India, providing video search on-deck to Bharti Airtel since May last year, as well as to Idea Cellular, Vodafone, Aircel and Tata Indicom.

Vuclip acts as a gateway to video content from the web – it takes videos from sources like YouTube and Metacafe, and transcodes them on the fly for consumption on the mobile. Content is made available for viewing as a full video, as well as piece-mealed in small sizes for users with lower bandwidth access.

The propensity to view video content is greater than to pay-and-then-download it. This helps telecom operators significantly increase data usage on the mobile. That as many as five Indian telecom operators have Vuclip on-deck is thus not surprising.

What Vuclip Really Wants

Vuclip monetizes this content through advertising next to video search results – earlier this year, mobile ad network MKhoj got the mandate for monetization of inventory on Vuclips website.

However, we don’t think that significant monetization for Vuclip will be from advertising – what the company would ideally want, is a share of the telecom operators data revenue from the viewing the content. Even then, tracking and reconciliation of data usage of content through Vuclip might be a challenge.

Related:

– Khoj To Monetise Vuclip’s Mobile Traffic; Garner Clients For API
– @MoMo Delhi: Video Ads On Mobile; Need For Mobile Ad Standards; Do-Call Registry; Personalization