Tycoon Carlos Slim backs Smartphone app developer Shazam with $40 million stake

Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men, is teaming up with smartphone app developer Shazam with a $40-million stake to back the development of the start-up best known for helping music fans identify catchy songs.

The move comes as a surprise from the 73-year-old Slim, who has operated in a more staid sector, the highly regulated telecommunications and TV business in Latin America, through his company Americal Movil.

Slim's only forays in Europe, before his latest venture saw him plough € 4.8-billion into stakes in Dutch operator KPN and Telekom Austria, on which he had racked up huge paper losses after their shares declined sharply in the past year.

Slim, ranked the world's top billionaire by Forbes magazine with a net worth of $73 billion, was roped in by one of Shazam's venture capital owners, Silicon Valley fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

UK-based Shazam use the funds to spur its exansion into television, where its recognition software can tune into an advertisement's soundtrack linking viewers directly to the brand's website.

It wants to establish the offer in the UK and the rest of Western Europe and Latin America.

America Movil, the telecoms firm controlled by Slim, would be taking an undisclosed stake believed to be around 10 per cent, valuing Shazam at close to £260 million.

Shazam had been embraced by advertisers, broadcasters and music labels that had 70 million monthly users – a threefold rise in two years. ITV and the consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble were among the many companies that had already used the service.

Slim, who topped the Forbes magazine Rich List, this year with his fortune, said Shazam was defining a new category of media en-gagement that combined the power of mobile with traditional broadcast media and advertising to create compelling value-added experiences for consumers, content providers and brands.

Andrew Fisher, executive chairman of Shazam, told The Independent newspaper that UK entrepreneurs could succeed on the global stage and attract some of the biggest investors who were backing the biggest opportunities.

Recent acquisitions of British tech companies included Yahoo's purchase of the news app Summly for around £20 million as also Twitter's TweetDeck deal estimated at £25 million.