Xobni gets $7m cash injection from Cisco and co

Silicon Valley startup Xobni, which develops MS Outlook plug-ins, has raised a $7m series B round of funding led by network giant Cisco.

Investors from the series A round of funding - Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, and Atomico - also contributed to this cash splurge.

Xobni said the latest investment was the cherry on the top of a year in which it claimed to have seen “rapid user growth and product development” at the firm.

The company was founded in 2006 and provides an Outlook add-on that analyses your inbox to help improve search and other functions. Over the past seven months it has developed Xobni from a private, invite-only beta to publicly available software, which it claims has been downloaded 1.5m times.

The buzzy annoying name, in case you wondered, spells “Inbox” backwards. Its biz partners include LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo! Mail and Skype to bundle data in Microsoft’s Outlook email product.

Xobni said it was gunning for premium business from its enterprise customer base, which perhaps best explains Cisco’s decision to invest in the startup. ®