Kiwa Media attracts New Zealand Chinese investment

Kiwa Media attracts New Zealand Chinese investment

Auckland digital book producer Kiwa Media has completed a Series A fund raising after attracting interest from New Zealand Chinese investors.

Speaking for the investors, Dr Xiaoying Fu says Kiwa Media’s technology is cutting edge internationally. Dr Fu has a doctorate in computer science from the United Kingdom. Since moving to New Zealand 15 years ago she has been working in the IT and finance sectors.

Rhonda Kite, chief executive of Kiwa Media, says the non-disclosed amount of the capital injection is timely, with the company needing to expand to cope with the growing demand for its technology know-how and services.

“Dr Fu and her group have acquired 25% of the company,” Rhonda Kite says. “Finding investors with the same vision and passion for combining IT and education, with global expertise is remarkable.”

Dr Fu says New Zealand’s creativity can be used to its economic advantage. While the country’s commodity-based trading is disadvantaged by its size and distance to markets, technology such as new media devices reach an international audience instantly.

Kiwa Media’s QBook™ produces multi-lingual, interactive, read-along digital books. QBook™ combines animation technology matched with a narrator’s voice and touchable text that is syncronised to highlight and sound when words are touched. This gives the audience a more entertaining reading and learning experience.

Kiwa Media was the New Zealand winner and entrant into the 2011 World Summit Awards in the e-Education section and has been singled out by British media as producing one of the best iPad book Apps.

The company has launched digital books for the household and education markets in Chinese. The Chinese version of Milly and Molly and the Bike Ride and Zoo You Later – Monkey Business follows the translation of those titles into Maori, Spanish, Italian and Japanese.

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