Endeavour Capital invests $1M in Khipu

Endeavour Capital invests $1M in Khipu

Endeavour Capital invests in another WaikatoLink spinout

HAMILTON 18 April, 2008 - Endeavour Capital announced today it has invested a million dollars into WaikatoLink spinout Khipu Systems Ltd. Khipu is an information technology company that provides highly innovative software products for high-speed, cost effective and accurate analysis of data generated by the world’s testing and automated process control markets. This data is essential for regulatory compliance, quality control, process control, traceability, and efficiency purposes.

WaikatoLink’s chief executive Mark Stuart says, “The Endeavour Capital investment will allow Khipu to secure a world class CEO and development team, convert current sales pipeline, secure development sites and strategic partnerships, and complete product development to position the company for strong growth. Funds will also be employed to progress IP protection and leverage patents to create new opportunities.”

Neville Jordan chief executive at Endeavour Capital says, “We have invested at an exciting time as Khipu is advancing rapidly along the development and commercialization curve. Leading international companies are already evaluating the product portfolio for their use and purchase.”

Khipu’s world leading intelligent software leverages expertise from the renowned machine learning team from the University of Waikato and the industry expertise of Hamilton based Hill Laboratories, which has clients around the world. The software tools fully automate the processes of data acquisition, integration, pre-processing and the generation and optimisation of mathematical models utilised to make predictions about samples and processes to inform and enable decision making.

This investment is the seventh Endeavour Capital has made in a WaikatoLink spinout company. Earlier this month Endeavour announced investments into four WaikatoLink pre-seed biotech technologies. Earlier investments included software developer Ectus in 2004, which it successfully exited in 2005, and rapidly growing biotech company ZyGEM.

Neville Jordan says, “Our success with Ectus and ZyGEM formed a trusted relationship on which to build. When we make an investment, the first thing we look at is who we are dealing with. WaikatoLink have proven to be very trustworthy so we were only too pleased to look at the science and technology.”

WaikatoLink’s impressive performance in commercialising technologies is reflected in its top 3% rating when benchmarked against US university technology transfer offices.

ENDS

About Endeavour Capital
Endeavour Capital is a leading New Zealand venture capital company, investing into New Zealand science and technology. Established in 1999, Endeavour Capital has a focus on developing globally competitive companies based on science and technology innovations. To date Endeavour has made investments across biotechnology, software and medical sectors. The Endeavour Capital Management Team is comprised of experienced entrepreneurs, each having key involvement in building and exiting at least one significant company in New Zealand or USA. Their model is to provide portfolio companies with significant operational, commercial and technical resources, complemented with capital. In order to assist with international growth plans, the Endeavour Capital managers form a partnership with the founders and key staff to maximize a company's worldwide opportunities.

www.ecap.co.nz

About WaikatoLink
WaikatoLink Limited is a world class technology development and investment company, with a strong track record in translating research outcomes into commercial technologies. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of the University of Waikato, it achieves this by identifying, managing and commercialising the University’s intellectual property. WaikatoLink works closely with industry, investors and researchers to identify and develop market opportunities for new technologies, and plays a key role in University knowledge transfer for economic transformation. Since its establishment in 2002, WaikatoLink has completed numerous licensing deals and established more than 12 start-up companies and joint ventures, which have collectively created more than 138 full-time equivalent jobs and achieved market capitalisation nearing NZ$200 million. Three of its start-ups have already been successfully exited. WaikatoLink’s impressive performance is reflected in its top 3% rating when benchmarked against US university technology transfer offices (AUTM survey data).
www.waikatolink.co.nz

About Khipu Systems

Khipu Systems Ltd is a joint venture between Waikato University and Hamilton based Hill Laboratories. Khipu’s current product platform iCalibra™ can be applied to two key markets, the testing market (laboratory and industrial) and automated/advanced process control markets. Industries throughout the world are using techniques such as NIR spectroscopy to measure particular physical or chemical properties swiftly and often. The main challenge to successfully using these predictive methods is building, deploying and maintaining the multivariate calibration models on which they rely. Models need to be continually refreshed and rebuilt with new examples if their predictions are to remain accurate. iCalibra is a software system that addresses many of the problems with building, deploying and maintaining calibration models, and paves the way for more accurate and reliable predictive modelling. Leading international companies are already evaluating the product portfolio for their use and purchase.

www.khipusystems.com

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