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Calm, a mindfulness app launched by Michael Acton Smith, an entrepreneur from United Kingdom in 2012 has locked in $27 million as funding, with the support of US investors and former One Direction singer Harry Styles.
The salient features of the app are videos, games and audio, which are designed to help users relieve stress and keep calm. According to a report by VentureBeat, at present the company is valued at $250m and is already a profitable venture.
The app has gained wide popularity as one of the leading mindfulness apps on Apple's App Store. Calm was also nominated as one of their top apps of 2017. Today it claims to have around 26 million downloads overall, with 50,000 new users getting added each day.
Calm founder Acton Smith is also renowned for his UK gaming company Mind Candy which was launched in the early 200s. He, along with Alex Tew had created another internet game Moshi Monsters that stormed the online world. Alex Tew shot to fame in 2005 for the Million Dollar Homepage. Tew also crafted a very basic pre-cursor to Calm in 2011, named Do nothing for 2 minutes. It encourages the users to sit there and, well, do nothing for a full 120 seconds.
Earlier, Calm had raised around $1.5 million in seed funding from notable names that include:-
- WordPress’ Matt Mullenweg
- Entrepreneur Jason Calacanis
- Bebo’s Michael Birch
With the recently raised $27 million, the company said that they plan to double down on global growth. Calm also says that it secured revenues of $22m last year, charging users a $4.99.
Acton Smith said, “The last few years have been extraordinary for Calm. In within a very short span of time, meditation has moved from the fringe of society to the mainstream. Much of the growth has been pumped in by word of mouth.”
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