Vuclip, a mobile video search and delivery startup has raised $8 million in its Series C round of funding, from New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Jafco Ventures. The two entities had previously invested $6 million in Vuclip's last round of funding, in September 2009. What Is the Funding For? There's no indication in the note, of the monetization of VuClip - it has monetized by serving advertising, and once had a deal with mKhoj (now Inmobi). There's little or no mention of what exactly VuClip will use this money for - it says that it will expand video analytics for advertisers and content owners, but just serving a large number of videos across devices must be expensive. I'd be surprised if advertising can adequately cover its content repurposing and delivery costs (more on repurposing below), particularly since VuClip claims to have seen a rapid increase in usage - that it took 31 months to serve up its first billion videos, and only eight months to reach the second billion; there's been an increase in video sharing among mobile users, which could have pushed consumption. More the consumption, higher the costs. What VuClip would want, as we had mentioned earlier, is data revenue share from telecom operators, since video increases data consumption and revenue. In a 3G environment in India, video consumption might increase, and lead to an increase in VuClip's costs, as well as operator data revenue. Unlikely they'll get anything from telecom operators, though. VuClip has mobile partnerships with Bharti Airtel,…
