State lures UK tech outfit
Connecticut Innovations, the state’s quasi-public authority responsible for technology investing and innovation development, has provided funding of $500,000 to Keisense Inc. through its Seed Investment Fund, giving the London-based technology company motive to shift operations here.
“We are excited to have played a role in attracting a UK-based information technology company to Connecticut,” said Peter Longo, president and executive director of Connecticut Innovations (CI). “We have great confidence that this young company will thrive in Connecticut’s business ecosystem, which offers access to highly qualified employees and management.”
Keisense will use the CI funding to continue its work developing and commercializing the company’s patent-pending technology, PriText, which overcomes the limitations and challenges of text input in today's mobile electronic devices. The PriText technology seeks to achieve smarter, faster devices with full QWERTY keyboards. The technology can be deployed on a wide range of devices that have touchpad or virtual keyboards, such as cell phones, smart-phones, PDAs, GPS devices and ultra-mobile PCs.
“We recognize the vast potential of the mobile telephone market and in the last year have invested in a mobile security and management software company, and a mobile streaming media company,” said Longo. “The current investment in Keisense acknowledges the increasingly important role played by user experience technologies as a key differentiator for carriers and handset manufacturers.”
According to Longo smart-phones will continue to replace all communication and organizational tools and will continue to be the user’s portal to both the professional and personal world. Although he believes the limited form factor and existing user input technologies tend to contradict the possible gains. Longo hopes that Keisense’s unique patent-pending technology will be the key to reducing ambiguity, increasing the speed of text entry and put the company in a desirable position to address one of the critical mobile market issues.
Longo explained that CI came across Keisense at a networking event and was intrigued. After meeting with Keisense executives, Longo and CI determined that Keisense was a natural fit for Connecticut. Keisense was founded by Santosh Sharan and Graham Dodgson in May 2006. This is third company that CI will have brought to Connecticut in the cellular application field.
“We are excited to have Connecticut Innovations as an investor,” said Sharan, CEO of Keisense. “They provide value beyond financing and have a successful track record helping early-stage companies achieve sustainable growth. Connecticut also provides an immediate access to large metropolitan markets in New York and Boston and access to a growing network of technology entrepreneurs.”
“This is CI’s 10th investment and second successful international recruitment since July,” said Gov. M. Jodi Rell in a prepared statement. “Connecticut is sending the message that we want to grow technology jobs, and I commend CI on this latest success story.”
0 Comments