Scotland’s new ‘Can Do’ competitive spirit
There was a time when Scottish entrepreneurs had to trundle all the way down south, looking for that elusive venture capital. But things have changed recently. Scotland has a new ecosystem of local angel and private investors, as well as more risk taking early stage VC funds. Spurred by a new brand ‘Scotland’ together with confidence in its underlying abilities and talent pool, they are putting their bets on a new breed of home-grown ‘Can Do’ attitude, highly competitive Scottish start-ups. The recent £2 million investment in Elonics, a fabless radio tuner company, is a good example of this.
Braveheart (AIM: BRH), the technology commercialisation and investment management company, announced that it has led a £2 million funding round into Livingston based Elonics Limited. Other investors included the Scottish Venture Fund and private investors Sir Tom Farmer and Brian Souter.
We first came across Elonics, when we profiled its founder David Srodzinski in September 2005.
Elonics was founded in 2003 and has stuck towards it long term vision. After having done some design services work, it is now transitioning into a product company. It initially received a £500k R&D grant from a Scottish Executive SPURPLUS R&D technology award to support the development of its proprietary DigitalTune™ technology.
The company claims that DigitalTune is a flexible radio tuner chip technology platform that can be configured to support different standards and frequencies, in a number of different applications. Elonics’ DigitalTune technology will initially be used to develop the E4000 chip, a flexible TV tuner for portable and handheld devices such as smart phones and laptops.
The market for flexible tuner chips for mobile and handheld devices is currently small and highly competitive, but is predicted to grow rapidly over the next few years. Elonics has a comprehensive patent portfolio that places it in a strong position to capitalise on future developments in this fast evolving field. It has a foundry agreement with IBM.
The E4000 is currently undergoing prototype development and evaluation and the funding is designed to provide working capital to enable Elonics to complete the development of the product and take it to market by the third quarter of 2008.
Commenting on the investment, Geoffrey Thomson, chief executive of Braveheart said, “Elonics’ DigitalTune technology will enable the company to provide a low cost and flexible tuner chip that will place it in an ideal position to take advantage of future growth in the market for mobile TV. The size of the investment we have made demonstrates the confidence we have in the potential of Elonics’ technology and management and consolidates Braveheart's reputation as one of the key supporters of innovation in this field.”
David Srodzinski, chief executive of Elonics, said, “We have worked tirelessly over the last 3 years to refine our platform CMOS multi-standard RF technology. We have now moved from concept to successful evaluation at multiple prospect sites throughout the world with a multi-standard tuner product. The funding comes at an excellent time for us as the markets are rapidly growing and prospect feedback is very good indeed”.
Neil Ross, head of the Scottish Venture Fund, commented, “Elonics is an innovative Scottish company capable of becoming a world-leading business. The Scottish Venture Fund co-invests alongside the private sector to encourage more investment in these exciting, growing Scottish companies.”
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© Chilli Publishing Ltd 2008 |
28 FEB 2008 |
