Posted: Fri, July 17, 2009
Profile: Pingar
Pingar is a New Zealand based Digital Publisher that has now established a presence in Wales, thanks to support from International Business Wales and other Welsh agencies. In February 2009 Pingar moved in to the Technium in Swansea in order to further develop established links between Swansea and Waikato Universities with the aim of doing some joint development work.
What's the history of your company?
In 2007 Pingar’s dynamic publishing technology was recognised by Microsoft and SmartAnalytics, the beta version of Pingar, was integrated into Microsoft Office Marketplaces providing millions of Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 users worldwide with access to the technology. The following year Pingar joined the select few to become a client of the global Microsoft Start-up Accelerator Program which provides leading-edge and early-stage technology companies with a range of support services and advice to help them succeed.
What unique products/services does your company provide?
Pingar has developed revolutionary technology for the monetisation and management of DRM (Digital Rights Management) of valuable internet content, by providing dynamically created user reports with sponsor matching/targeting enabling free delivery of the information to users. The personalised dynamic publishing service is a service for Microsoft (IE) Internet and Enterprise products/users.
Moving beyond mere search, Pingar provides automated content summarisation, instead of links to articles and sites. Pingar has developed innovative technology for the delivery of responses to search queries. A Pingar report is as though you have a personal researcher preparing a unique publication drawn from valuable paid and unpaid content. The report is provided free of charge to the user based on dynamic sponsoring/advertising using bidding and profiling algorithms.
Microsoft now embed Pingar under the Pingar – ‘Smart Analytics’ brand as part of the Research Services button within Office 2003/7, Office Live and IE7 and to be released IE8 and SharePoint in Q3/Q4 2009.
What's been the key to your success?
Being able to collaborate with the universities both locally (Swansea University) and internationally (Waikato and Hong Kong) in order to develop and fine tune our product using talent from all over the globe.
What one piece of outside technology (software/hardware/other) has benefited your company most?
Pingar’s revenue is acquired by from advertisers/sponsors and Enterprise Licences to services of Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office users.
Pingar is part of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Programme which provides leading-edge and early-stage technology companies with a range of support services and advice to help them succeed. We join ten other businesses identified by Microsoft for their high-growth potential and because they present opportunities where Microsoft's support can make a real difference. This has been superb in helping us get started.
What one piece of advice would you give to start-up companies in your field?
Engage early. It always takes longer than you think it is going to, so set up partnerships with key players (i.e. Microsoft and investors) and institutions such as the universities (for assistance with expertise and developing IP), governing bodies (such as the Welsh Assembly) and places like the Technium, to find out what is available in terms of assistance.
Where do you see your company going in the future?
The Welsh branch of Pingar LP is Kaimai Limited, falling directly under Kaimai Holdings, wholly owned by the LP in New Zealand (see below). We are looking at collaborating with Swansea University, and the Dragon Innovation Partnership (covering Swansea University, Swansea Metropolitan University and Trinity College), to source the correct staff for testing, IT development and support.
We have hired two employees so far (temporarily, through the ITWales programme) who are starting with me on the 13th July 2009. These two staff members will be learning the Pingar platform and helping me to get the name of Pingar out into the Welsh market.
Providing we are successful in applying for a Research and Development grant through the Welsh Assembly Government, we are looking to start a small development team and grow this team to between 15 and 20 developers over the next 3 years.
The structure of the companies is as follows:
For more information visit www.pingar.com
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Cymraeg
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