Grand Rapids, MI - VoEx, Inc., a leading global IP communications innovator, today announced that it has completed a $ 12 million Series B funding round led by Kennet Venture Partners LLC. Kennet, a leading international venture capital firm focused on the technology sector, was joined in this round by investors IVS A/S and EDF Ventures.
Javier Rojas, managing director of Kennet Venture Partners LLC in Foster City, CA, has joined the board of VoEx as a result of the investment. "VoEx represents a great example of a business using disruptive, innovative technology to achieve very rapid revenue growth," states Mr. Rojas. He adds, "because of compelling economics, innovative offerings and superior service levels, its most demanding Tier 1 customers are very satisfied and are rapidly increasing their commitments to VoEx. This is the best validation that its VOIP services have significant growth potential.” Furthermore, Beau Laskey, General Partner of EDF Ventures, and Robert Steiner, Senior Investment Director at IVS, will join the board.
“We look forward to further enabling our global communications services provider customers and our applications developer partners with the infrastructure needed to rapidly and efficiently expand their voice and messaging offerings to subscribers and users worldwide”, stated co-founder and CEO Haydar Haba.
"We are very pleased to have Kennet, IVS, and EDF joining us in our move to the forefront of the IP communications world”, said VoEX Chairman Frank M. Fawzi. “This round of investment is further proof of our ability to deliver high-quality, cost-effective VoIP services and applications”.
VoEx serves as a VoIP interconnect, enabling different VoIP networks (or “islands") to be interconnected. This minimizes TDM traffic for calls between VoIP networks, as well as dialout and dialin calls, while offering end users rich VoIP enabled web services. To deliver this, the company offers partners an integrated, on-demand suite of VoIP applications, management tools and network services that deliver VoIP-based peering, interworking, transcoding, trunking, billing, registry and enhanced telephony services for large, communications-intensive organizations. VoEx’s current customers include the largest global IP based voice communities as well as Tier 1 & 2 carriers, universities and enterprises. The Series B financing will be used to fuel continued global revenue growth, expansion of the VoEx carrier registry and the integrated delivery of advanced IP-based voice and messaging applications to its voice services and online community customers.
VoEx, Inc. is a provider of mission critical core network VoIP services to large communications services providers, universities, large enterprises and VOIP applications developers. VoEx's platform is a highly scalable, intelligent technology platform which provides a flexible and interoperable network architecture enabling VoIP origination and termination as well as cross connections across VOIP islands and between the VOIP and traditional telephony systems. VoEx supplies a complete turnkey VoIP solution that includes fully outsourced integration, Intelligent Discovery and LCR functionality, transport, protocol interworking, registry and billing functions across all of the VoEx product lines. By turning to VoEx, communications services providers gain immediate access to VoIP-based services and applications that 1) expand product sets, 2) accelerate their time-to-market, 3) reduce operating costs and 4) increase profitability of offerings.
Kennet Venture Partners is a leading transatlantic venture capital firm which invests in growth companies providing information technology products and business services that leverage information technology. Kennet provides expansion capital to firms that want to accelerate growth and build exceptional shareholder value in partnership with an experienced investor. Kennet Venture Partners acts as an advisor to Kennet II LP, a Guernsey limited partnership.
IVS A/S is a Danish venture company founded in 1999 by a team of experienced professional entrepreneurs focused on supporting growth companies in the Scandinavian and European markets to realize their full potential. IVS invests in technology-enabled innovations within the IT and telecommunication industries, with an emphasis on software and infrastructure. Investments are made in businesses founded on unique and proven innovations, either in technology or in the implementation of new business models. www.ivs.dk
EDF is experienced in investing in all stages of growing companies and has a particular expertise in working with those that are early in their development. We seek equity positions and value-add relationships in companies where we can effectively partner with entrepreneurs to build companies that achieve their maximum potential for sustainable and profitable growth. Funds are typically invested in stages with the expectation that ultimately $4 to $6 million will be invested in each opportunity. EDF prefers to co-invest with other venture capital funds and is prepared to lead the formation of an investor syndicate. Early stage market driven companies in health care and information technology are particularly attractive to the Fund.
Kennet Venture Partners LLC (“Kennet”), a leading international venture capital firm focused on the technology sector, today announces the closing of a $10 million round of preferred equity funding in Resilience Corporation (“Resilience”), a fast-growing manufacturer of ultra-high-availability security appliances. Kennet led this round and was joined by current investor Baring Private Equity Asia.
The new funding will be used to fuel rapid growth that began last year when Resilience launched its Ndurant® and Ndurant Express™ appliance lines for Check Point firewalls/VPNs. Resilience also released in the first quarter of 2006 their new NetSquad™ appliances for Websense Web security and Protak™ appliances for Check Point‘s Connectra SSL VPN application.
Eric Filipek, director of Kennet Venture Partners LLC in Foster City, CA, has joined the board of Resilience as a result of the investment. “Resilience represents a great example of a technology business that re-invented itself on a model of capital efficiency and is now thriving,” states Mr. Filipek. He adds, “This financing provides the capital to enable Resilience to now scale its sales and marketing infrastructure globally and continue its rapid revenue growth. The market for best-of-breed applications delivered via an open, hardened appliance is very large and fast growing. Resilience is well positioned and now well financed to be a leading player.”
Resilience president and CEO Dr. Theodore J. Marr stated “Last year was a time of innovation and rapid growth at Resilience. Besides the launch of three product lines that use our patented Integrated High Availability™ technology, we also launched our revolutionary Continuous Secured Ownership Warranty(SM) program that effectively eliminates hardware end of life from customers’ solutions. The new funding will let us build on the momentum we started last year to expand our market share and build value for our investors.”
Kennet Venture Partners is a leading transatlantic venture capital firm which invests in growth companies providing information technology products and business services that leverage information technology. Kennet provides expansion capital to firms that want to accelerate growth and build exceptional shareholder value in partnership with an experienced investor. Kennet Venture Partners acts as an advisor to Kennet II LP, a Guernsey limited partnership.
Resilience sets the standard for solutions that advance business continuity through its ultra-available technology for networks and its landmark Continuous Secured Ownership(SM) program that eliminates hardware EOL. Resilience has delivered innovative fault-tolerant and high availability network appliances since 1995. The company holds three key patents in fault-tolerant computing. Resilience partners with leading application providers to offer a growing family of High Availability solutions for: firewalls, Web security, SSL VPN, and others. Resilience is a privately held, venture-backed company with corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California and sales offices throughout the world.
Baring Asia specializes in providing expansion capital to rapidly growing middle market companies in Asia Pacific. Baring Asia currently has over US$ 800 million in capital committed for investment in Asia. Baring Asia has been a private equity investor in Asia since 1997 and has 20 investment professionals in offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Delhi, Bombay and San Francisco.
Resilience, Ndurant, NetSquad, RESlink, iHA, and Continuous Secured Ownership are trademarks of Resilience. Other trademarks are the property of their owners. All rights reserved © 2006
Investment will help fund international expansion
London - Kennet Venture Partners Ltd ("Kennet"), a leading international venture capital firm focused on the technology sector, has invested $8 million in Adviva Media Ltd ("Adviva"), the leading UK-based online advertising network for brand advertisers.
Adviva is a London-based provider of network online advertising services to major international brand advertisers. Adviva aggregates advertising inventory from its network of 200 high-quality websites and places this inventory with the media agencies that represent brand advertisers. Adviva currently serves over 500 million ads per month.
Adviva's network reached over 17.9 million unique users in October 2005, representing 62% of the total UK online audience. Adviva's network is consistently one of the top five UK properties in terms of unique user reach, along with MSN, Google and eBay.
Adviva was founded in 2000 by Todd Treusdell and Phil Coote and has historically focused its business on the UK market. The company is now developing its offering in Europe, expanding initially into Germany and France. With this expansion, Adviva will address the three largest advertising markets in Europe.
Kennet is the first institutional investor in Adviva, which to date has been funded through reinvested profits. As part of the investment, Kennet Managing Directors Michael Elias and Javier Rojas will join Adviva's board of directors.
"Online advertising represents a rapidly growing portion of overall ad spend, and the Internet is now used by brand advertisers who are increasingly shifting their spend from print, television and radio." said Michael Elias, Managing Director, Kennet Venture Partners. "Adviva's position as a premium brand advertising network puts it at the confluence of these two trends."
"We provide outstanding service to our customers and our proprietary 'lifestyle' demographic profiling technology allows our advertisers the ability to reach specific target groups, which are key to their brand," said Adviva CEO Todd Treusdell. "We are enthusiastic about the international expansion of Adviva and our partnership with Kennet."
Established in 2000, Adviva offers network online advertising to publishers and advertisers. A forward thinking approach to account management, coupled with an aggressive approach to technology development is crucial to Adviva's continued success. Built on reputation, Adviva concentrate on CPM network advertising working with good quality UK websites and advertisers. A no nonsense approach has made Adviva unique in the industry and has driven growth year on year to create one of the largest, most comprehensive and best performing networks in the UK. www.adviva.com
Kennet Venture Partners is a leading transatlantic venture capital firm which invests in growth companies providing information technology products and business services that leverage information technology. Kennet provides expansion capital to firms that want to accelerate growth and build exceptional shareholder value in partnership with an experienced investor. Kennet Venture Partners acts as an advisor to Kennet I LP, a Jersey limited partnership and to Kennet II LP, a Guernsey limited partnership. Kennet Venture Partners is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. For more information: www.kennet.com
Will Fuel Sales and Marketing for Rapidly Growing Provider of On-Demand Project and Portfolio Management Software (PPM) for the Extended Enterprise
eProject (www.eproject.com) today announced it has closed an $8 million financing round led by Kennet Venture Partners LLC (Kennet) (www.kennet.com), a leading transatlantic venture capital firm.
Genevest (www.genevest.ch), a Switzerland based global technology investment firm also participated. The funds will be used to fuel sales and marketing initiatives for the rapidly growing provider of on-demand (software-as-service) project, process and portfolio management software for the extended enterprise.
Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions enable users to maximize project ROI by compressing project cycle times, identify and automate best practices, optimize resource allocations, and deliver real-time status and information updates on project portfolios.
"eProject has reinvented the Project and Portfolio Management space by offering the first PPM platform that addresses the needs of the entire enterprise and can be deployed for business users and stakeholders across all departments. We believe eProject is spearheading a newly emerging and potentially very large market, proven by the explosive sales and organic growth and adoption of eProject in both mid and large-sized corporations across a wide-range of industries," said Javier Rojas, managing director of Kennet in Silicon Valley.
eProject, with more than 350 customers worldwide and profitable since August 2003, is currently realizing 70% annualized revenue growth. The company added more than 100 customers in 2004, with a list that now includes companies such as Amerisure, BP, BASF, Dow, Esurance, Honeywell, and RealNetworks.
"Project and portfolio management applications are gaining wider use within organizations and across more industries. One of the key contributing factors towards this trend is the advent of easy-to-use, easy-to-access and collaborative software-as-a-service project and portfolio management solutions," said Evan Quinn, group vice president of applications research, IDC (www.idc.com).
eProject is an easier to use, faster to deploy, lower cost alternative to traditional enterprise project portfolio management solutions typically found in large enterprises that are mainly used for IT governance applications. As a result, both IT and business users have deployed it for a broad range of management projects requiring cross organization participation.
"eProject has enjoyed spectacular growth during the past year, with hundreds of new companies deploying our solution. eProject has quickly become the standard software of choice for companies who want a single, unified platform for managing all their projects across their entire enterprise and beyond," said Steven Anderson, COO.
Genevest provides advisory services for institutional and sophisticated high net worth investors. With over 20 years of venture capital experience, Genevest invest in Information Technology, Communications, Material Sciences, Medical Technology and Life Sciences. Genevest designs a tailor-made investment strategy with its investors and executes through careful deal selection and due diligence. Genevest are long-term investors and understand that building companies takes time. For more information: www.genevest.ch.
Kennet Venture Partners LLC ('Kennet') is a leading transatlantic venture capital firm, which invests in growth companies providing information technology products and business services that leverage information technology. Kennet offers expansion capital to firms that want to accelerate growth and build exceptional shareholder value in partnership with an experienced investor. Kennet acts as an advisor to Kennet II LP, a Guernsey limited partnership. For more information: www.kennet.com.
eProject (www.eproject.com) delivers the only on-demand project and portfolio management solution for the extended enterprise. eProject is an intuitive, unified platform that enables users to maximize project ROI by compressing project cycle times, identifying best practices and optimizing resource allocations, with rapid deployment and quick adoption. eProject is used by more than 350 companies worldwide including BASF, BP, Cushman and Wakefield, Dow Chemical, Honeywell and T-Mobile.
London – Kennet Venture Partners Ltd (“Kennet”), a leading international venture capital firm focused on the technology sector, has led a €12.0m financing round for Chipidea, an analog and mixed-signal semiconductor solutions provider. Vision Capital also invested in this financing round, as did existing investors, BCP Capital and BPI/Fundo Caravela.
Chipidea has developed one of the largest analog and mixed-signal technology portfolios in the world, ranging from precision single-function blocks to full analog sub-systems for communications, multimedia and power management applications. Founded in 1997, Chipidea now employs over 180 people based in Europe, Asia and North America. The company’s headquarters is Lisbon, Portugal.
Chipidea is profitable and achieved revenues of $18m in 2004, almost double that of the previous year. The company’s key products target fast-growing market segments such as wireless communications, digital media and consumer electronics.
Historically Chipidea has been funded with a combination of reinvested profits and a modest amount of external capital, provided by two industrial investors and two financial investors, both leading Portuguese institutions – BCP Capital and BPI/Fundo Caravela. Chipidea will use the proceeds of this financing to further expand its IP business and to launch a number of its own semiconductor products.
Michael Elias, Managing Director of Kennet, commented: “Jose Franca and his colleagues have built a world class semiconductor IP business using very little external capital. Kennet specializes in the providing expansion financing to capital-efficient business with global opportunities. We are therefore delighted at the opportunity to invest in Chipidea and help take it to it next level of development.”
Jose Franca, co-founder and CEO of Chipidea, commented: “We are delighted to welcome Kennet and Vision as new financial partners to Chipidea, as well as the further investment from our existing investors BCP Capital and BPI/Fundo Caravela. This investment will enable us to consolidate our leadership position in the analog and mixed signal market.”
Kennet Venture Partners is a leading transatlantic venture capital firm which invests in growth companies providing information technology products and business services that leverage information technology. Kennet provides expansion capital to firms that want to accelerate growth and build exceptional shareholder value in partnership with an experienced investor. Kennet Venture Partners acts as an advisor to Kennet I LP, a Jersey limited partnership and to Kennet II LP, a Guernsey limited partnership. Kennet Venture Partners is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.
For more information: www.kennet.com
Chipidea is the world’s number one analog/mixed-signal merchant technology supplier targeting fast-growing market segments like wireless communications, digital media and consumer electronics. Chipidea supports blue-chip customers across the globe, has an impeccable reputation for delivering high-quality products and is known for its reliable execution. Chipidea licenses its technology to leading companies in these and other key markets, delivering everything from precision single-function blocks to full analog sub-systems. Chipidea employs 180 people in its research and development, and sales and marketing offices across Europe, Asia and North America.
For more information: www.chipidea.com
Copenhagen, Denmark and Foster City, California - February 2005 - Venture capital firm Kennet Venture Partners (“Kennet”) has agreed to invest €5.1 million in Denmark-based Kapow Technologies A/S, provider of RoboSuite, a horizontal Web Integration software platform. Web Integration enables business users and non-technical programmers to rapidly integrate or extend applications and content. For corporations embarking on application integration, Intranet or portal projects, this means faster project ROI and considerable time-to-market advantages.
RoboSuite is already highly successful in the international market, with more than 70 customers worldwide. Kapow Technologies will use the capital to expand its international presence, and to further develop its suite of Web Integration solutions. The main focus of expansion will be the continuing build-up of Kapow Technologies’ US operations.
BEA Systems (Nasdaq: BEAS), a world leader in application infrastructure software, is a key technology and distribution partner for Kapow Technologies. RoboSuite WebLogic Edition complements BEA’s portal platform by enabling fast and easy integration of Web applications and content into the enterprise portal.
“We have been impressed with the capability of Kapow’s technology, and the degree of customer traction the company has achieved to date. For Kennet this is an opportunity to participate in a software industry paradigm shift — development of a new breed of integration solutions that can tie together applications and content with minimal IT skills required,” said David Carratt, managing director of Kennet in London. He added: “RoboSuite empowers businesses to integrate functionality from disparate sources for quick response to market demands, and at the same time it offers core IT staff the ability to deliver more services without resorting to heavy back-end application integration projects.”
“Having witnessed the business benefits of Kapow’s software within large US and European enterprises we are convinced that we can assist Kapow in accelerating the delivery of Web Integration solutions into the mainstream market. We look forward to working with the team from Kapow Technologies to build a successful US operation in the coming years,” said Javier Rojas, managing director of Kennet in Silicon Valley.
Stefan Andreasen, the CEO and founder of Kapow Technologies, states: “The investment from Kennet comes at a time when Kapow’s rate of new customer acquisition and revenues are growing rapidly. We are excited by the opportunity to work with Kennet to further accelerate this growth and to maintain our leadership in the area of Web Integration software.”
Kennet Venture Partners is a leading transatlantic venture capital firm, which invests in growth companies providing information technology products and business services that leverage information technology. Kennet offers expansion capital to firms that want to accelerate growth and build exceptional shareholder value in partnership with an experienced investor. Kennet Venture Partners acts as an advisor to Kennet I LP, a Jersey limited partnership, and to Kennet II LP, a Guernsey limited partnership. Kennet Venture Partners is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.
For more information: www.kennet.com
Kapow Technologies is the leading provider of Web Integration solutions. Kapow markets RoboSuite, an integration platform that enables fast and powerful integration of web-based content and applications into portals, content management systems and knowledge management systems. RoboSuite can access web resources and automate web interactions to extract and re-use online content, data or business functionality, regardless of origin or underlying technology. The platform includes an intuitive visual design environment, as well as comprehensive Web Integration lifecycle tools, that simplify integration and speed project delivery so that users can achieve faster and better results than with traditional integration approaches.
Kapow Technologies has more than 70 public and private customers worldwide. With a solid track record of documented savings of several man-years in portal projects and with an ROI in the range of 500 to 1000% in Web Integration projects, RoboSuite is becoming a key infrastructure component when developing, testing and deploying new Web solutions. Kapow partners with BEA, IBM, WRQ, CoreMedia, Inxight Software, Mobile Aware, Autonomy, Fatwire, Unilog, Synkron, Valtech, Softlogic, SoftPro, Domino Systems, Uptime and Avinci. Customers include Intel Corp, USACE, US Government, Deutsche Post, Lycos Europe, Barclays Bank, Total, DZ Bank, Swedish Defense and Danish Broadcasting.
For more information on the company: www.kapowtech.com