Background
The company started life in 2002 as Digital Web Books in a Manchester University Incubator, by Les Csonge. Shortly after, in 2003, the business was bought out by Richard Stephenson. Trading continued with a change of name to Digital Alternatives. The business grew quickly using software developed by first Asian and then US companies.
In 2005 it became clear that the future would be defined by the convergence of print and rich media. To serve into this mixed media world, the company concluded that it would no longer be practicable for the company to continue to grow by simple outsourcing services. Any future model would need to allow publishers to control and edit their own publications.
A new software architecture was designed and YUDU was launched as a cloud based publishing platform in May 2007 after 12 months of development. At launch, the company changed its name to YUDU Ltd and YUDU Media Corp in the USA.
Since then the business has grown by more than 40% per annum, serving publishing customers around the globe and winning a host of awards for technology, service and growth.
Today YUDU publishes to the web and mobile markets with a broad range of solutions.
Key milestones
- 2006/7 – Cloud computing platform for creating interactive rich media digital editions.
- 2008 – Peer-to-peer and user generated content site for publishers and readers – YUDU.com – Top 6k sites in the world by Alexa ranking (top 5k US, top 1k UK)
- 2010 – iPad App software tools: 100 iPad and iPhone apps live in the first 12 months from launch.
- 2011 – Illustrated books service for fixed layout ePub (for the iBookstore) and Read Aloud books.
- 2012 – Cross platform solution for publishing across web, iOS & Android devices.
- 2013 - AppFactory launched for partners.
- 2013 - Upgraded YUDU Publisher digital publishing suite launched.
- 2014 - HTML browser-solution launched.