Tungle on Tuesday raised $5 million in a second round of funding led by new investor Commonwealth Capital and returning seed backers JLA Ventures and Desjardins Venture Capital.

The Montreal-based startup, whose focus is on web-based meeting coordination services,  also announced the beta launch of its web scheduling application.

The service allows users to share their “free/busy calendar” with other users to facilitate meeting and scheduling, according to Tungle CEO Marc Gingras. It works with Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple’s iCal, or Entourage, and also on its own.

“The service targets the busiest fragment of the population, like sales people, consultants, recruiters, small business owners, etc. In brief, the ones with the most meetings,” Mr. Gingras said.

The company, which received $1.5 million in May 2007 and hopes to start making money next year, plans to use the new round of funding for commercialization and engineering.

Tungle’s web services are free, but the company plans to make money by offering subscription-based packages with premium features within the next 12 months. The basic service will remain free.

But the startup’s web scheduling service faces a few tough challenges as it appeals to a class of professionals that might be eager to curb business costs in a time of economic instability. It also faces stiff competition from providers of free web scheduling services like Time Bridge.

Gloomy times or not, Tungle is confident that the growing smartphone environment and the rise of “professionals on the move,” who need to check on their BlackBerry, iPhones, or any other smartphone, will respond favorably to Tungle.

“In times like these, buyers are looking for real value. We actually believe that this environment will generate more users for us because great solutions will stand out from the rest,” Mr. Gingras said.

Tungle was a Red Herring 50 Canada winner in 2008.