Rapid Mobile Media, the fledgling Edinburgh-based maker of software for mobile phone advertising and betting, yesterday said it had secured a £2m funding round led by US venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates.

The company, which was founded in 2004 by Iain Maddox and Dr Richard Marshall to create tools and applications for mobile phones and devices, said the new cash would be used as working capital to accelerate the commercial deployment of its Ad360 mobile advertising platform.

Alliance Trust Equity Partners also joined existing investors Pentech Ventures and Scottish Enterprise's Scottish Venture Fund as part of the second-round funding.

The company's first-round funding, worth £650,000, gave Pentech a minority stake in Rapid Mobile in 2006.

The company also said that Mike Ramsay of New Enterprise Associates, who is also the co-founder and chief executive at TiVo, the popular US digital video recorder system, would be joining the board of Rapid Mobile as "investor-director".

Marshall said of the second-round funding: "It is a welcome validation of our software technology and marketing strategy, both of which began when the firm was founded in 2004."

Later in 2006, the company sold its ground-breaking Mobet software to online betting company Betfair.

Rapid Mobile has claimed to be the first to be able to bring third-generation-type interactive gambling services to existing mobile phones.