Biometrics Fingerprint Recognition
NATURE OF BUSINESS | Biometrics: Fingerprint recognition |
STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT | Start-up |
INVESTMENT BEING SOUGHT | £500k |
20% EIS TAX RELIEF POTENTIALLY AVAILABLE | Yes |
PREPARED TO HAVE MULTIPLE INVESTORS | Yes (Syndicate to be created on request) |
INVEST ALONGSIDE VENTURE CAPITAL FUND | Yes (Angel-VC Fund co-investment is expected) |
EQUITY STAKE | Realistic |
INVESTOR PARTICIPATION | Non-exec |
MANAGERIAL SKILLS SOUGHT | Chair. Strategic. |
LOCATION | West Midlands based |
This is a spin-out from one of Europe's top research universities, which will continue to provide support. Its founders are leaders in the field of signal and image processing. Suitably experienced business development and financial managers have been added to create a management team that can fully exploit the worldwide commercial potential. Significantly, three major multinationals (headquartered in the USA, Europe and Asia) have separately agreed to collaborate with the company with a view to licensing its intellectual property (IP) including software.
Fingerprint recognition is the most widely accepted means of biometric identification with 44% of the total biometric market. However even the current "state of the art" systems have a 2% error rate, which is too high for many practical uses. This company's technology already performs very quickly with an error rate of only 1% and is on track for an error rate of only 0.2%, which in these security-conscious times not only beats its competitors but allows the application of fingerprint recognition systems in a much wider range of situations such as border control and financial transactions, thus increasing market size (already $3bn in 2007, forecast $7.5bn in 2012).
For high-end, large-scale applications the company's IP will be non-exclusively licensed to a number of major biometric vendors. For low-end small and medium scale applications the company will supply software to system integrators. For embedded system applications the company will supply complete solutions to end-users. Turnover in 2012 is forecast at £5.2m with PBT of £1.8m, which will drive a high valuation for the planned exit by trade sale in 2010.
Capital is needed to bring in high calibre sales/licensing staff, and to increase the capacity of the technical team to support final testing, integration and commissioning of the company's software with the leading biometric vendors and system integrators that will be its licensees and customers.
Further information: Harry Stott, University of Warwick Science Park Limited
024 7632 3123 or capital@uwsp.co.uk