QEOS targets US$100m valuation by end 2013
- Optical laser startup gets RM10m mission investment from Agensi Inovasi Malaysia
- Working to triple its valuation by way of strengthening its era, running with Silterra
WHAT is the first thing you do while you land a multimillion-ringgit investment round? Hire extra engineers, support advertising, plan a main A&P marketing campaign, purchase greater device to ramp up production? Or stay focused on the end aim and use the funding to get there?For Dr Gabriel Walter (percent, left), leader govt officer of high speed LED begin-up Quantum Electro Opto Systems Sdn Bhd (QEOS), the focus is squarely on its purpose of becoming an acquisition goal.
As he factors out, “Nobody buys you due to the fact your organisation has a brilliant advertising and marketing group, quality manipulate or logistics talents. They buy you due to your technology,” due to the fact that larger corporations could already have these types of components in location.
“My goal is to build our valuation up to US$100 million by means of the stop of 2013, that is 3-fold what it is these days,” he says while requested what his important intention is now that he has acquired RM10 million (US$three.five million) in undertaking investment from Agensi Inovasi Malaysia (AIM).
AIM is a statutory frame set up by the Malaysian Government to gas the push toward setting up an ‘innovation economy.’
The injection is simply the modern day in a chain of investment that QEOS has received over time and it is the maiden funding task by AIM, the national innovation employer hooked up in 2010.
“It is good to growth manufacturing and get revenue but that is not the maximum critical component for us given our strategy – valuation is prime,” says Walter.
The important consciousness is to maintain growing its price by means of adding extra patents and variations of technology and merchandise. It has additionally commenced operating with semiconductor fab Silterra in Kulim to come up with a few key components based totally on Silterra’s platform.
More importantly, the modern round offers Walter greater respiratory area and a feel of continuation with a -year time frame.
“I can now plan for the long term whereas earlier than you're usually focused at the want to tempo yourself and make certain you spend money well,” he says. “You realize, while you are continually saving, that restricts the kind of activities you may do, so this funding injection is just a large load off my thoughts.”
Not your typical Malaysian start-up
QEOS itself stands proud from maximum other begin-u.s.a.of recent years in Malaysia, absolutely because it's far in a space where it has a completely unique patent-protected optical laser technology.
And, in the direction of the goal of maximizing its cost, as opposed to just licensing the generation as a issue piece in a system, QEOS is constructing the whole product, in this case the high-speed optical cables to be used in information centers, supercomputing and customer electronics along with the now ubiquitous HDMI cables lying around in most households.
“Moving up the meals chain,” is how Dr Raymond Chin (percent. Proper) describes it. Silicon Valley-based Chin is the chairman of QEOS and answerable for enhance product improvement and business development.
It is uncommon for a boss to also helm product and enterprise development, but Chin’s role is reflective of the approach of QEOS to be an acquisition goal.
He describes his function as “mapping what we've got and our technology trajectory to attempt to get some thing into the marketplace that addresses the wishes of some of the top technology companies and in the shortest time frame.”
Those pinnacle generation groups are certainly based totally inside the United States and in Silicon Valley mainly – which is wherein Chin has his network and home.
Chin himself isn't your common chairman of the common Malaysian begin-up. Over the past 25 years, he has led more than one entrepreneurial younger corporations, as chairman or CEO, in addition to making an investment while serving as a venture capital associate in corporate and private project corporations.
In the early 1990s he turned into performing CEO of Proxim Inc, wherein he repositioned the employer from a wireless inventory radio tag provider to an innovator and pioneer within the wi-fi LAN (nearby place network) marketplace.
Within 3 years of this strategic change, the business enterprise had a a success public listing on NASDAQ. He additionally holds 3 patents inside the areas of wi-fi networks and multi-quantum layer image detectors.
But that pales in contrast to the 8 granted patents Walter has, with 38 more pending! Some of the patents revolve around his position in 2004 as co-inventor of the arena’s first transistor laser, making feasible new possibilities in high-speed optoelectronics and incorporated circuits.
Besides his patents, Walter’s paintings has resulted in extra than forty nine peer-reviewed magazine papers and 12 convention papers. Clearly the Sarawak-born researcher is not your average academician grew to become entrepreneur.
QEOS was founded in 2008 with the aid of Walter and two different researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and hooked up its base in Melaka whilst it obtained a Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (Mosti) Brain Gain Malaysia Diaspora provide of RM2.8 million.
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