Japanese Expansion for Brightcove

TOKYO, August 4: The
online video platform Brightcove has named a general manager for its Japanese
subsidiary, as well as announced its first customer in this lucrative Asian
market, inking a deal to power local web coverage of this year’s Olympics.

Hisashige Hashimoto has
been tapped as general manager of Brightcove KK to oversee day-to-day
operations and drive take-up of the Internet TV service by Japanese media
companies and marketers. He joins Brightcove after two years as the president
and CEO of Paygent, a mobile auction escrow service he launched in 2006 and
grew to 2,000 customers before leaving in 2008. Prior to Paygent, Hashimoto
worked at Macromedia KK and Mitsui & Co.

The first Japanese client
for Brightcove is web TV operator PRESENTCAST, which selected the platform to
power gorin.jp, the exclusive online video
portal in Japan for coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. PRESENTCAST
will program and distribute more than 200 advertising-supported video segments
from the games on gorin.jp from August 6 to September 23. Gorin.jp was established
by 132 commercial broadcasters around Japan as the official online video
distribution website of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

“Since the establishment
of Brightcove KK, we’ve seen tremendous interest in the Japanese market for our
Internet video platform,” said Jeremy Allaire, Brightcove’s chairman and CEO. “With the addition of Mr. Hashimoto
as general manager and the signing of a highly prestigious first customer,
Brightcove KK is poised for accelerated growth in Japan, contributing to our
overall international expansion.”

Brightcove also announced
$4.9 million in financing from Dentsu, J-Stream, transcosmos and Cyber
Communications for its majority-owned Japanese business.

—By Mansha Daswani