December 2010 Archives

Irish startup Avego has raised $5.6m in venture capital funding in an A round led by SOSventures for its combination of GPS hardware and software to match people wanting to share transport and is expanding its headquarters.

The company has already raised $4.5m for its Shared Transport technology that matches drivers and riders in real time as they travel to allow commuters to rideshare whenever they want, from wherever they are; as well as its Futurefleet  end-to-end real-time management system for passenger transport operators. It now aims to add another 35 people to its headcount of 55 around the world, with other offices in the US and China. The expansion will see the Irish site double to 70 with a focus on R&D.



From left to right: Sean O'Sullivan, Avego Managing Director; Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation Batt O'Keeffe, TD; Niall Bolger, Enterprise Ireland.

A spinout company from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has won a key deal to supply a diagnostic monitoring system for testing athletes training in the UK.

Argento Diagnostics started in 2006 with technology and underlying science developed by Rob Porter, Principal Research Scientist in the Biophysics & Biodiagnostics Group through a three-year, NPL Strategic Research Fellowship.

It has developed a handheld tester based on magnetic and silver nanoparticles that can provide quick analysis of key compounds in the body, rather than having to send samples to a central lab. It also combines Bluetooth and WiFi technology for easy data management, and the systems will be used by UK Sport for testing athletes.

A spin out from Cambridge consultancy Plextek has won a multimillion pound contract for its technology for the control, monitoring and energy measurement of street lights.

Telensa only started this year after a period of development inside Plextek, and its PLANet system has been chosen by maintenance group Amey to support a 25 year, £2.7bn project in Birmingham. Telensa's initial five-year contract is worth £4m.

PLANet will be used on all new and existing streetlights to control their switching and dimming; it will also monitor the performance of each light on a daily basis. From Amey's operations centre, Telensa's PLANet system communicates with nearly 100,000 streetlights across the city using wireless technology.

Cambridge Wireless has awarded five new technology companies as part of its Discovering Startups competition.

The five, who each received £2000 at the awards last night, were chosen from 25 entrants and range from medical sensors and imaging systems to mobile phone apps. The group of twenty judges included Tim Regan from Microsoft; Frederic Rombaut of Qualcomm Ventures Europe; Simon Bond of SiliconSouthWest; Carson Bradbury of Cre8 Ventures; Jamie Urquhart of Pond Venture Partners and co-founder of ARM; and Glenn Collinson, co-founder of CSR.

The current credit crunch in startup funding is bringing new approaches to the fore. One of these is crowdfunding, AKA crowd sourced funding.

Most publicly used by Facebook competitor Diaspora, this allows members of the public to make small investments into companies that require funding.

Angel investor and company mentor Brian Dorricott points out on his Meteorical blog that this is viable now as Internet companies have been creating an automated process for combining the small sums from the public, calculating and then allocating interest payments.

The investment arm of Imperial College in London is looking to raise £140m to invest in spinout companies from Oxford, Cambridge and University College London in a move to expand its investments outside its own pipeline of companies.

Imperial Innovations will also be increasing the size of investments in its own spinout companies, more than trebling the money available.

Europe has lost another flourishing early stage company to the US as Belgian data centre technology startup Racktivity raises $8m and relocates its headquarters to the US.

Racktivity started in 2008 developing power distribution units (PDUs) for the racks of computers in data centres managed by its own energy and uptime management software platform. It launched these Rack Controllers in Europe this summer and is already one of the top 100 companies in Europe according to Red Herring, with its US launch planned for next quarter.