Contextual grammar and spell-checker company Ginger Software Ltd. has raised $6.3 million in its fourth financing round led by Shlomo Kalish's Vaizra Ventures. Kalish joins the board and the company has also appointed Net Jacobsson, a former executive at Facebook and AOL, as CEO,
Ginger Software was chosen as one of "Globes" most promising start ups for 2011/12.
Ginger Software has raised $15 million since it was founded in 2007 by CTO Yael Karov and Avner Zingvil. Investors include Lightspeed partner, Yoni Hefetz, Daria Ventures and angel investor Zohar Gilon. The company is based in Israel and Massachusetts. The company's products target people learning English as a second language as well as those suffering from dyslexia, providing its users with an online service that automatically corrects text as they type.
“Initially, I quickly dismissed Ginger as boring software for grammar correction,” said Jacobsson, “but after digging much deeper into the technology, the platform and the potential usages, I realized that I had just seen the tip of the iceberg and that perhaps the company just did not have the right positioning and message."
Jacobsson added that the company faces a meaningful challenge, given the billions of people around the world who want to learn English (China has 325 million English learners), but struggle to maintain their proficiency because they do not live in an English-speaking environment and lack that level of immersion.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 29, 2012
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