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January 26, 2006
Infineon spinoff's RFID software raises first round
Austria’s RFiT Solutions is one of several startups to emerge as a result of Infineon’s ongoing restructuring, as the chipmaker sheds most of its futurific activities. (Others to emerge include biometric passport solution provider, Safe-ID, backed by Wellington Capital and Atlas Venture, chip-design company, OneSpin Solutions GmbH, backed by Apax, and wearable computing startup, Interactive Wear AG.)
RFiT was founded via a managment buyout last June, a deal that included rights to the products and a customer demo and verification site located in Graz. It has just raised Euro 4 mln from local venture firm PONTIS Venture Partners and France’s Truffle Venture.
Founders Dominik Berger and Alexander Gauby, were responsible for marketing, while Matthias Weitlaner, was the product manager for the business while it was inside Infineon. They hope to convince systems integrators to adopt RFiT's software and its approach to RFID implementation.
Given their experience, plus the customer contacts they bring from their time at Infineon, we’d say the team is in a good position to grow the business. Although they might have to shed that demo site, or get some of its suppliers to co-fund it. That’s the kind of luxury only big companies can afford.
If RFiT expands rapidly, it will probably have to bring in larger, more experienced investors, or find a strategic partner among one the big systems houses that want a piece of the RFID market, like CapGemini or AtosOrigin. Its VC backers are both quite young themselves. Truffle Venture says it is specialized in corporate spinoffs. True, but its activity has mainly been in the biotech and life science sector in France. Plus the partnership was founded only in 2002. It's a similar story for Pontis – it is not only young, it is small, with about $35 million in capital.
Combining new VC partnerships with new companies is something we saw a lot of during the bubble years with often less than spectacular results.
Lawyers can find their files faster with RFID so they will have more available time to bill clients
RFiT's software manages the hardware (the tags, readers etc) and the data that the devices output. They are calling it RFID “edgeware”.
Read - RFiT funding (Pontis Venture)
Posted on January 26, 2006 08:48 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | Permalink
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