- Email: [email protected]
Vocent secures US$7.2 million in VC funding
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BUSINESS WATCH
Company News • Irish technology firm Trust5 has opened its doors in Sydney, Australia. The company, which offers products using speaker verification to allow secure payment authentication for mobile commerce, is aiming its technology at the Australian banking, insurance and on-line share trading sectors. Meanwhile, domestic telecommunications service provider Optus has signed an exclusive agreement to resell Trust5’s products in Australia and will begin exploratory trials of the technology later this year. Trust5 has also appointed a number of representatives in South Africa, the UK, Turkey and the Middle East. • Security Biometrics has completed its acquisition of Lightec Communications and said it expects combined 2002 revenues to exceed US$17 million. Lightec Communications shareholders received US$4 million in cash and notes, plus 18 million shares of common stock of Security Biometrics. Security Biometrics anticipates enhanced sales and marketing opportunities for its technologies, which include dynamic signature verification, gesture recognition and touch pads. In particular, the deal is expected to see greater sales of the company’s dynamic signature verification solution in the financial, insurance and B-to-B markets. Security Biometrics is a reseller of Penflow technology from Israeli supplier WonderNet. • BioconX, a developer of biometric-based network security software, has signed up more value added resellers as part of its central business strategy. Business Systems Engineering, SST Computing and Creative Socio-Medics are now able to market, install, integrate and support BioconX software in their respective marketplaces, in particular the healthcare sector.
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Financial
Vocent secures US$7.2 million in VC funding Vocent Solutions, a US-based provider of speaker verification solutions, has secured US$7.2 million in second-round funding. The funding round was led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Silicon Valley Bank Venture Capital Group and previous angel investors. The company says the new funds will be used to accelerate growth in all business areas, including product development, and will specifically be used to expand sales and marketing efforts. In its first year of operation, Vocent made a number of successful sales, and claims to have made inroads into the Fortune 1000 customer marketplace. The company’s platform independent Voice Secure product range is designed to automate a range of business transactions, in particular within the financial industry.
in a restriction of the Cavio International share price.” At this point Mann called off the deal and looked for alternative public companies with which to do business. The company was approached by 12 companies interested in acquiring Cavio Corporation. Of these, Mann told Btt that Discovery was the highest quality. “Now we are in the process once more of collating shares and performing due diligence,” Mann said. The company told Btt it is getting excited about a new product it is about to release, which has been in beta-testing recently. The product has the ability to create a Virtual Private Network ‘on the fly’ per transaction between the peripheral biometric device and the authentication database server. Major development work on this system had swelled the company’s staff numbers to 85, but following poor economic conditions this is now down to 20. Contact: Paul Mann at Cavio Corporation, Tel: +1 604 696 0633, email: [email protected]
Company news/fingerprint Contact: Craig Gould at Vocent, Tel: +1 650 938 3663, email: [email protected]
Company news
Cavio makes Discovery deal Cavio Corporation made one false start in its bid to become a public-entity, but will now achieve its goal if it is acquired by Discovery Investments. Discovery will acquire 100% of the outstanding shares of Cavio in exchange for 14 million shares. According to the terms of the agreement, Paul Mann, president and CEO of Cavio Corporation will become the new company’s chairman and CEO. Mann commented: “Given recent events concerning Cavio’s corporate developments, we are pleased to be in a position to announce this transaction with a fully reporting public company.” Earlier in the year Cavio looked set to be acquired by Sonica, a company trading on the Pink Sheets (a public environment designed for start ups). The deal turned sour at the due diligence stage, however. Mann told Btt: “The deal with Sonica was progressing and the company had changed its name to Cavio International Corporation. However, during the due diligence and share exchange period, existing Sonica directors were involved in stock market activities not in keeping with the good faith of the agreement, resulting
Fingerprint Cards sells licence in Asian market Swedish fingerprint sensor supplier Fingerprint Cards has sold a non-exclusive licence to Hardware & Software Technology Co. (HST) in Taiwan. The license allows HST to market and sell Fingerprint Cards’ technology in Asia and re-sell Fingerprint Cards’ components from its own stock in Taiwan. HST has a substantial network of contacts among volume manufacturers of electronic products in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. During the start-up phase, it will be supplying customers with biometric components from an in-house warehouse, but those customers with plans for larger volumes will be transferred to Fingerprint Cards in order to guarantee access to lower component prices essential to highvolume production. Meanwhile, Fingerprint Cards has announced its financial performance figures for the first three months of the year ended 31 March. The company made a loss for the quarter of SEK 7.9 million compared with SEK 9.8 million in the same period of 2001. Revenues meanwhile rose from SEK 100,000 to SEK 300,000 in the first quarter. Contact: Lennart Carlson at Fingerprint Cards, Tel: +46 31 60 78 20, Fax: +46 31 13 73 85
Biometric Technology Today • July/August 2002
7/5/02
12:04 PM
Page 6
BUSINESS WATCH
Company News • Irish technology firm Trust5 has opened its doors in Sydney, Australia. The company, which offers products using speaker verification to allow secure payment authentication for mobile commerce, is aiming its technology at the Australian banking, insurance and on-line share trading sectors. Meanwhile, domestic telecommunications service provider Optus has signed an exclusive agreement to resell Trust5’s products in Australia and will begin exploratory trials of the technology later this year. Trust5 has also appointed a number of representatives in South Africa, the UK, Turkey and the Middle East. • Security Biometrics has completed its acquisition of Lightec Communications and said it expects combined 2002 revenues to exceed US$17 million. Lightec Communications shareholders received US$4 million in cash and notes, plus 18 million shares of common stock of Security Biometrics. Security Biometrics anticipates enhanced sales and marketing opportunities for its technologies, which include dynamic signature verification, gesture recognition and touch pads. In particular, the deal is expected to see greater sales of the company’s dynamic signature verification solution in the financial, insurance and B-to-B markets. Security Biometrics is a reseller of Penflow technology from Israeli supplier WonderNet. • BioconX, a developer of biometric-based network security software, has signed up more value added resellers as part of its central business strategy. Business Systems Engineering, SST Computing and Creative Socio-Medics are now able to market, install, integrate and support BioconX software in their respective marketplaces, in particular the healthcare sector.
6
Financial
Vocent secures US$7.2 million in VC funding Vocent Solutions, a US-based provider of speaker verification solutions, has secured US$7.2 million in second-round funding. The funding round was led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Silicon Valley Bank Venture Capital Group and previous angel investors. The company says the new funds will be used to accelerate growth in all business areas, including product development, and will specifically be used to expand sales and marketing efforts. In its first year of operation, Vocent made a number of successful sales, and claims to have made inroads into the Fortune 1000 customer marketplace. The company’s platform independent Voice Secure product range is designed to automate a range of business transactions, in particular within the financial industry.
in a restriction of the Cavio International share price.” At this point Mann called off the deal and looked for alternative public companies with which to do business. The company was approached by 12 companies interested in acquiring Cavio Corporation. Of these, Mann told Btt that Discovery was the highest quality. “Now we are in the process once more of collating shares and performing due diligence,” Mann said. The company told Btt it is getting excited about a new product it is about to release, which has been in beta-testing recently. The product has the ability to create a Virtual Private Network ‘on the fly’ per transaction between the peripheral biometric device and the authentication database server. Major development work on this system had swelled the company’s staff numbers to 85, but following poor economic conditions this is now down to 20. Contact: Paul Mann at Cavio Corporation, Tel: +1 604 696 0633, email: [email protected]
Company news/fingerprint Contact: Craig Gould at Vocent, Tel: +1 650 938 3663, email: [email protected]
Company news
Cavio makes Discovery deal Cavio Corporation made one false start in its bid to become a public-entity, but will now achieve its goal if it is acquired by Discovery Investments. Discovery will acquire 100% of the outstanding shares of Cavio in exchange for 14 million shares. According to the terms of the agreement, Paul Mann, president and CEO of Cavio Corporation will become the new company’s chairman and CEO. Mann commented: “Given recent events concerning Cavio’s corporate developments, we are pleased to be in a position to announce this transaction with a fully reporting public company.” Earlier in the year Cavio looked set to be acquired by Sonica, a company trading on the Pink Sheets (a public environment designed for start ups). The deal turned sour at the due diligence stage, however. Mann told Btt: “The deal with Sonica was progressing and the company had changed its name to Cavio International Corporation. However, during the due diligence and share exchange period, existing Sonica directors were involved in stock market activities not in keeping with the good faith of the agreement, resulting
Fingerprint Cards sells licence in Asian market Swedish fingerprint sensor supplier Fingerprint Cards has sold a non-exclusive licence to Hardware & Software Technology Co. (HST) in Taiwan. The license allows HST to market and sell Fingerprint Cards’ technology in Asia and re-sell Fingerprint Cards’ components from its own stock in Taiwan. HST has a substantial network of contacts among volume manufacturers of electronic products in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. During the start-up phase, it will be supplying customers with biometric components from an in-house warehouse, but those customers with plans for larger volumes will be transferred to Fingerprint Cards in order to guarantee access to lower component prices essential to highvolume production. Meanwhile, Fingerprint Cards has announced its financial performance figures for the first three months of the year ended 31 March. The company made a loss for the quarter of SEK 7.9 million compared with SEK 9.8 million in the same period of 2001. Revenues meanwhile rose from SEK 100,000 to SEK 300,000 in the first quarter. Contact: Lennart Carlson at Fingerprint Cards, Tel: +46 31 60 78 20, Fax: +46 31 13 73 85
Biometric Technology Today • July/August 2002