East of England companies wow judges to win running the Gauntlet Investment

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Friday, November 18, 2005

Three companies were successful in securing investment funding (subject to contract) from CREATE in the East of England Development Agency's running the gauntlet competition for entrepreneurs. A fourth company also looks set to secure funding following further discussion.

The successful companies are:

OASLM Woodall/Sachs – A Cambridge-based company which develops technology for use in high definition front and rear projection televisions.
Funding package of £500,000 from CREATE plus £10,000-worth of financial management services from Grant Thornton and £10,000-worth of legal advice from Taylor Vinters.

YESpay International Limited - Elstree-based company and provider of highly secure Electronic Funds Transfer payment services for retailers.
Funding package of £250,000 from CREATE plus £10,000-worth of financial management services from Grant Thornton and £10,000-worth of legal advice from Taylor Vinters.

Short Fuze Ltd - Cambridge-based company which is developing a product that will bring to market 3D movie-making as a leisure activity.
Funding package of £50,000 from CREATE plus £10,000-worth of financial management services from Grant Thornton and £10,000-worth of legal advice from Taylor Vinters.

Amrivox Ltd - a Cambridge-based designer and manufacturer of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is also set to secure investment funding. Boyd Mulvey, CEO of CREATE, pledged to lead a syndicate of investors. Investment will be announced in due course and the company will also receive £10,000-worth of financial management services from Grant Thornton, £10,000-worth of legal advice from Taylor Vinters and the services of BSG Team Ventures to help Amrivox recruit a chief executive.

A fifth company, Cambridge-based finalist OrthoMimetics, was also awarded £10,000-worth of financial management services from Grant Thornton and £10,000-worth of legal advice from Taylor Vinters.

Three further companies, Captimax, Silicon Infusion and Vidanti, have promising futures as interest was expressed by CREATE and a number of other judges/investors.

The ten finalists who went head to head on 17 November are listed below.

Amrivox Ltd - Cambridge
Amrivox is a designer, developer and manufacturer of leading edge Voice over IP solutions (VoIP) for the Home and Small Business. Highly innovative features target problems experienced by operators today, reducing their support burden and facilitating increased revenues.
Http://www.amrivox.com

b-enterprise Ltd - Bedford
Commercial web-based careers service for school students. B-live is a new service for young people that offers the most accurate, sophisticated and personalised careers information and advice available today and links them to a vast array of opportunities within potential employers, educational establishments and other relevant organisations. B-live provides unparalleled access to the youth market for potential employers and advertisers, with its extensive and rich database and ability to pinpoint a particular group of users.
Http://www.b-live.com

Captimax Sports Media Ltd - Westcliffe-on-Sea, Essex
Captimax is a business creating and selling additional media value in motor racing and other fast-moving sports through the use of patented camera-pointing technology ("Navicam"). The system allows close-ups of racing vehicles to be broadcast on TV, thereby enhancing the viewer’s TV experience and exposure for car sponsors, as extensively demonstrated by footage acquired with a prototype of the Navicam system (video samples available). The company will create revenues by capturing a portion of the substantial increase in value for sponsors that Navicam creates.
Http://www.captimax.com

OASLM Woodall/Sachs - Cambridge
Development of high definition modulators and light engines for the front and rear projection television markets. The new company will be focused on the development and marketing of an optically addressed spatial light modulator (OASLM) and a light engine for use in high definition front and rear projection televisions. The company will sell light valves and reference design light engines. OASLMSs are well known to be very high efficiency modulators and a projector built using these devices has an efficiency that is up to 2.5 times brighter than existing projection technologies such as the DLP, HTPS (called LCD projection) and LCoS.

Oddy Mobstar - Colchester, Essex
Web and mobile enabled gaming. Aim is to establish a mobile game development and sales company providing next generation game concepts that utilise the technology available and provides games with a truly mobile experience. Mobile gaming multi-player sweepstakes The unique selling point of the games will allow gamers to purchase an object, improve the object through training, pay into a prize fund and then compete with other gamers for this prize fund. There will be a 2:1 winner ratio. The gamer will be offered a range of prizes, from ring-tones to credit.

OrthoMimetics - Cambridge
OrthoMimetics is a Cambridge, UK based company in the field of orthopaedics and regenerative medicine. Its products harness a patented series of novel, biomaterials-based technologies that uniquely mimic the structure and composition of skeletal tissues. By establishing a line of products that support and enhance the body's own repair mechanisms, OrthoMimetics aims to extend the active lifestyle of patients suffering from sports injuries, trauma and early-stage osteoarthritis, potentially saving governments and healthcare insurers billions of dollars in joint-replacement costs.
Http://www.orthomimetics.com

Short Fuze Ltd - Cambridge
The company is developing an innovative new tool that will bring 3d movie-making as a leisure activity to the mass market. Machinimascope is an easy-to-use tool for creating 3D animated films, based on technology developed for top-end computer games, which does for animation what Microsoft Word did for text editing.
The target market is hobbyist film-makers wanting to tell stories for their personal entertainment and to share with friends, family and the wider community. It is designed for film-makers, not 3D modellers, so does not require 3D skills to use, unlike other animation tools and it works like a game, not like a desktop application, so is intuitive and simple enough to be used by children.
Http://www.shortfuze.co.uk

Silicon Infusion Limited - Watford, Herts
Silicon Infusion is a 5 year old design services company that is transforming into a semiconductor business. The company will deliver a new class of chips based on its patent pending Enodia technology. Enodia improves silicon design productivity by up to ten fold and reverses the current silicon industry mindset. Instead of concentrating millions of dollars on designing single chips for single applications, Silicon Infusion can now manufacture a single Elodea chip and its customers can design millions of dollars worth of new applications for it.
Http://www.siliconinfusion.com

Vidanti - Cambridge
Consumer devices for Broadband TV, multi-channel TV and other on-demand services delivered over high-speed IP connection and displayed on a TV screen. Vadanti's aim is to bridge the gap between semiconductor manufacturers and Broadband TV service operators, through the licensing and manufacture by us of original equipment. The convergence of technologies, from High Definition TV to high-speed DSL or PON Access, makes this an area in need of technical guidance.
Http://www.vidanti.com

YESpay International Limited - Elstree, Herts
YESpay is a global provider of highly secure and scalable Electronic Funds Transfer payment services for retailers operating in traditional high street, petrol forecourt, hospitality, leisure, mail order and web environments. These e-payments services help retailers migrate their integrated EPOS tills, mobile EFT terminals and unattended kiosks to emerging EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) Chip and PIN standards before the global fraud liability shift deadlines mandated by the card associations.
Http://www.yes-pay.com

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