VILNIUS — GetJar, the Lithuanian mobile application company that has grown into the second biggest app company in the world, announced that it has raised €9 million via the venture capital firm Accel Partners.

Echoing Microsoft and Apple Inc’s rise from garage projects to Silicon Valley stars, GetJar has gone from being a small project among friends to one of the biggest and most successful application download sites in the world. Only Apple’s App Store can boast a larger number of downloads per month and a larger range of apps. Both Getjar and App Store have passed one billion downloads.

GetJar said it would use the money to develop its consumer-oriented sites, getjar.com and m.getjar.com. The company’s pay-per-download app will also be developed using the money.

“This new funding will be instrumental in taking GetJar to the next level in our business strategy for aggressive global expansion and product development,” Ilja Laurs, founder and CEO of GetJar said.

Accel Partners said they were keen to do business with the Lithuanian company because it was “the leading open platform in the mobile apps space,” Rich Wong of Accel Partners said. “Mobile app developers need to get discovered, build a marketing channel for mobile users and scale to massive user bases. With over one billion downloads to date, GetJar has led the industry to create this unique, cross-platform app store solution.”

GetJar is the leading mobile application market on the internet for non-Apple devices.

GetJar tripled its workforce over the past year and remained profitable despite the economic crisis that pummeled its home country.

This article is free to view. To read Baltic Reports’ subscription-only articles, click here.