HispanicBusiness

Smartphone contacts management company Contacts+ has raised $1 million in seed funding from TriplePoint Ventures, Tencent, and TMT Investments, as well as ex-Google senior business product manager Richard Chen and Pejman Nozad.

Contacts+ co-founder and CEO Lior Romano told "Techcrunch", "Your contacts aren't really your own when they're scattered across multiple services. They can all shut you out if they wanted to. I want people to own their own contacts for a change."

Contacts+ app provides a full list of user's contacts in list or grid forms. Users can tap on a contact to bring up their entry, and offers a range ways to send messages or calls.

Contacts+ has graduated from the the Silicon Valley accelerator for Israeli start-ups, UpWest Labs where it focused on building and integrating an in-app messaging service for Contacts+ users, bridging the gap between an aggregation tool and a communications tool.

Romano said, "It was a pivotal point. Social networks are extremely important for communicating, but they're better for reinforcing what you already do on your phone: talking and messaging."

"Techcrunch" reports that Romano and his colleagues have been working on a new update to the Contacts+ app, which has just launched into private beta.

Romano told "Newsgeek" that despite the excursion to Silicon Valley, Contacts+ development will remain in Israel.