Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. In the case of 20-year old Adi Lipman this meant that two years ago, when he needed to pass the matriculation exams, he asked his dad, an electronics engineers, why there were no portable translating tools on the market. Other kids would have just gone ahead and cribbed the answers on their sleeves.
Adi’s idea got a big push this week, when the product, now named Quicktionary, was introduced to the general public. At the same time, manufacturer-developer Wizcom Technologies announced it is heading rapidly towards a Wall Street IPO, intending to raise $40-50 million by issuing 20-25% company share.
"Globes" also reported yesterday that Wizcom investor Meir Shamir of Mivtach-Shamir returned last night from a round of meetings in France with potential US underwriters, and that Shamir was accompanied by representatives of Oppenheimer, expected to be one of the three lead underwriters in the IPO.
At the same time, the first several hundred units were shipped out last week to French office supply chain FNAC, where they were reportedly snatched off the shelves at about $180 a pop.
Wizcom intends to release the pen on the Israeli market next month, where the price will be around NIS 549. "Globes" reported yesterday that mass production of the Wizcom pen is expected by Q4 ’97 with the IPO taking place only after the company reports significant multi-million dollar revenues
There reason for this week’s interest in both the product and the company is the result of good public relations. Quicktionary’s introduction was timed to coincide with the Back to School exhibition which opens June 24 at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds, after which it will be released in Israel next month, priced at NIS 549 each.
The product itself is deceptively simple-looking. Quicktionary is a light-weight, pen-sized instrument which automatically translates and displays texts in various languages, using a portable optical scanner. The pen contains over 400,000 words and idioms, reads multiple fonts and types sizes, and switches instantly between native and foreign languages. Quicktionary is geared to markets where English is not the primary language and is available in Hebrew-English, French-English, German- English, Dutch- English, Japanese- English, Spanish-English and Italian-English. It is intended for sale to secondary school, college, and university students, business-persons, and gift shops,
But the innovative product has also generated interest in the company - and not for the first time. On the week of April 25, 1996, Mivtach Shamir's shares registered an unexpected 10 % rise, the result of a story published in "Haaretz" about scanner translation software developed by relatively unknown company Zohar Amarganit. At the time, Zohar Amarganit’s general manager David Gal expressed his annoyance about the leak to the press. "Haaretz’, he said, had inaccurately described the technology, the product was still in development and not yet ready to be announced.
One year and one name change later, the time has come. Zohar Amarganit - now called Wizcom - came to public attention in March of this year, when Quicktionary received "Byte" magazine’s Best Peripheral Product award at CeBIT ‘97 in Hanover.
Shortly thereafter, Wizcom announced that it has signed a number of distribution agreements with large European publishing houses to market the translating pen throughout the continent. These include Hexaglot of Germany, Lexibook of France, Excom of Switzerland, Micro Connection Distribution of Belgium and J. Noach of Holland.
Wizcom’s shareholders are Lipman Electronic Engineering (60%) and Mivtach Shamir (15%), US investment bank Oppenheimer (8%), software house Ligature (6%) and an investment group managed by Maritime Bank (15%). The investment group and Mivtach Shamir hold options to increase their share by 10% each, at Lipman’s expense, on $10 million company value.
Quicktionary makes use of Ligature optical character recognition (OCR) technology. Ligature's OCR applications, running on more than 1 million computers
world-wide, are known for their ease of use, low memory requirements
and superior recognition of international languages. Ligature's OCR-on-a-Chip technology compressed the power of desktop OCR onto a 64K chip to be integrated into digital cameras, hand-held scanning devices and other integrated systems.
The Quicktionary scanner was developed by TASE-traded Lipman Electronics Engineering, part of the IDC group, which develops a range of communication application-oriented sophisticated computerized and electronic systems.
Lipman Electronics general manager Aharon Lipman, by the way, is father to Adi Lipman. A spokesperson for Wizcom could not clarify whether young Adi - now an IDF soldier - will be receiving the 2% royalties on sales as reported in the press, but did say he is employed by Lipman. In any case, it’s safe to say that both the idea-man and the product have the backing of strong parents.
Two months ago, Wizcom moved into its new 1,500 sq.m plant at Har Hotzvim in Jerusalem, near Ligature. The company is privately-owned, not an incubator start-up, and receives no support from the Office of the Chief Scientist. The new plant will benefit from tax-exempt status for the next decade.
And Wizcom general manager David Gal said this week development is progressing in a number of additional applications based on its proprietary technology. These include voice recognition technology, and dictionary updates using either memory cards or via Internet download, plus specific terminology databases for professional use.
The company and the electronic pen have attracted investor interest, especially in light of an expected IPO. Mivtach Shamir shares have risen 84.9% since the beginning of this year, and Lipman has risen 64.3%. A successful company like Wizcom would be good news for Lipman, which has suffered NIS 25 million in losses over the past three years.