Amkiri is the winner of the ThePITCH startup competition, which took place for the seventh straight year at the Journey conference held in Tel Aviv by EY Israel and "Globes."
Amkiri has created a new concept: visual perfume - fragrant ink that can be used to paint perfume on the skin that will remain there for an extended period. The resulting experience is designed to gain visibility for the fragrance experience in the form of temporary tattoos that can be removed with soap and water. The company received an investment from IFF in May.
Eight companies reached the finals from 200 that submitted applications. In addition to Amkiri, the finalists included Anzu, a company that puts advertising in computer games. In its presentation, Anzu stated that the revenue in the games industry totals $109 billion a year, but only $5.6 billion is generated from advertising in the sector.
A third finalist was Kindite, which is developing a solution for protecting information on the cloud. Kindite's solution makes it possible to encrypt information on the cloud with the information owners exercising sole control over the encryption; the encryption does not require sharing the information or the encryption key with any third party. Even if the information is leaked from the cloud, it will be encrypted with an additional encryption layer. The company's technology facilitates processing of the encrypted data and obtaining encrypted results without disclosing the information, but does not allow the data on the cloud to be processed using complicated artificial intelligence (AI).
A fourth finalist, SkyLine Robotics, uses AI technologies to operate external window-cleaning robots to replace human window cleaners in order to avoid the risk of such high-altitude work and cut operating costs. The company is developing a comprehensive AI-based operating system that operates completely standard robots. The software is becoming shelf products for robots that are suitable for working in a dynamic, unpredictable, and hazardous environment.
The fifth finalist was SegaSec, which is developing a solution for active protection of organizations against attempted phishing by their customers, which detracts from the customers' confidence. In recent months attempts were made to impersonate Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE:CEL; TASE:CEL) and Bank Hapoalim (TASE: POLI) and steal information about their customers. In order to prevent such cases, SegaSec scans the Internet looking for impersonation fraud. It thwarts the attackers and takes the websites off the Internet in order to prevent information from being gathered. The company also dilutes the already collected data in order to prevent the attackers from using it.
The sixth finalist was Flytrex, which presented the operating system it had developed for managing deliveries from businesses to consumers using drones. The system has undergone a successful food delivery pilot in Iceland, and is now one of two companies with US federal approval for operating food deliveries in the US using drones. In the next two years, the company will begin drone food deliveries in US suburbs where large distances from city centers make conventional delivery uneconomic and therefore unavailable.
The seventh finalist, DoMed, presented a solution for protection of medical devices. Medical devices contain various types of hardware, operating systems, and architecture. The challenge is to create a single system that can protect all of these devices. Other companies in the market protect a network of hospitals, not the devices themselves. DoMed protects the devices, with protection being activated by the last link in the chain connected to the network. This makes it possible to also protect pacemakers, diabetes monitoring devices, and other devices that patients take home, instead of the devices being kept on hospital premises. DoMed's challenge is to apply the solution it has developed to devices with the relatively scanty resources that can be devoted to security.
The eighth finalist, RedFalcon, presented AI-based technology designed to substantially reduce the computing power required to make calculations and analyze information. The company has developed a solution that identifies the minimum needs for a specific calculation, thereby saving on resources used for analysis of large quantities of data and performing complicated calculations. The company's solution includes modules for specific AI operations, which are conducted efficiently and can therefore be performed economically and safely outside of the cloud.
The finals were held in the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel in front of 1,500 investors, entrepreneurs, and senior foreign and Israeli members of the venture capital community active in Israel. The companies that reached the finals in the first six years of the competition have since raised over $300 million, and seven of them have been sold to date.
The selection process included opinions from many investors and advisors in the venture capital community in Israel. The semifinals were held in September. The companies reaching the finals benefited from intensive advice from mentors working in all of the venture capital funds active in Israel, meetings with senior advisors, and training workshops.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 17, 2018
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