The smartphone, which is glued to most of us 24/7, is a tool for gathering data on behalf of more than a few bodies and institutions. The apps that we download, the transactions we complete, and our cellular signal all serve as digital breadcrumbs for our location. “Big Brother” is tracking us, and we often have no idea.
One Israeli company developed an app that tracks those cellular signals and uses them to analyze population samples at a specific time or location for a variety of targets.
The company, Trendit, concluded a new share offering in the London Stock Exchange last week at a modest valuation of £12 million a valuation that generally merits a share offering on AIM, London’s market for smaller companies.
Trendit, founded in 2008, and based in Ra'anana, raised €4 million, at a share price of 5.53p. Since the IPO, the share price gained 22% (though at low volume), raising the company valuation to $21 million.
The company gained prominence by developing applications to monitor populations, even in real time, and analyze trends and mass behavior. One use of the technology, for example, is to supply shopping malls with accurate data on visitor volume, stay times, and socioeconomic status all gathered through the mobile device’s cellular signal.
In the IPO prospectus, the company explained that its technology gathers data from one source, connects to social events and geographic data in order to produce “population clouds” and uses those to analyze and predict trends.
A data source can be a network provider with as little as 15% market share in order to provide data representative of the entire population, according to Trendit.
The company’s software has been implemented in 30 projects across the world for a variety of purposes by a number of clients, like governing bodies building a “Smart City”, law enforcement, human resources, and intelligence agencies.
Trendit is essentially trying to ride the wave of Big Data, which according to IDC raised revenue of $125 billion last year.
However large the market may be, Trendit is still a small player, as its financial statements show. The company finished 2012 with revenue of $198,000; in the second half of 2015, it had no revenue, and its net loss stood at $206,000 figures that make one wonder how the company managed to list on the LSE.
As of June 2015, the company does not have any cash on hand and its equity deficit stood at $564,000.
Trendit was founded by 46-year-old Dr. Erez Weinroth, who managed it until 2013 and recently returned to serve on its board of directors. Essentially, Weinroth, the CEO, and the chairman are the company’s only employees.
Weinroth holds 2.1% of the company’s capital, and Trendit’s largest shareholder is an Israeli PE company called Capital International Financial Services.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 13, 2016
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