30 Israeli start-ups fishing for top Red Herring tech award

More Israeli nominees than from any European country except UK and France

A Red Herring 100 award (Photo credit: Courtesy)
A Red Herring 100 award (Photo credit: Courtesy)

Unlike fisherman, tech companies long to come home with a “red herring” — specifically, a Top 100 Company of the Year Award from Red Herring, the tech news magazine — among the most prestigious tech prizes around. Awarded since 1996, the Red Herring people choose 100 of the most promising start-ups in tech and life sciences that are still pre-exit, evaluating them for the quality of their intellectual property, research and development, market prospects, success at getting investments, industry awards, and other factors.

Each year for the past decade, multiple Israeli companies have been nominated for the award. This year, Israel set a new best, with 30 start-ups nominated in the RH Top 100 Europe category, where Israeli firms compete. Israel had more companies on the nominees list than any other European country, except for Britain (46) and France (33).

Top 100 winners — there are separate contests for the US, Europe, and Asia each year — are on a fast-track to success; over the past five years, over 200 of them have gone on to exits, either through acquisitions or IPOs. Among the Israeli winners that have had successful exits have been AdapTV, Peer39, Vigilant Technology, and of course, Waze.

Among the nominated companies is eyeSight, which is one of the world’s two leaders in market share in 2D gesture technology (the other, PointGrab, is also an Israeli company). Last year, the company developed the world’s first Android smart set-top box with integrated gesture recognition technology, for South Korea’s InnoDigital. The box not only lets users control just about any function of their TV set with hand gestures, but can turn any digital-capable set into a “smart TV,” with Internet, YouTube, video call, and other capabilities.

Called the nTobeBox, the device comes equipped with a built-in webcam that, when connected to the TV, will allow users to do anything on screen they would have been able to do with the set’s remote control, from lowering and raising the volume, changing channels, fixing “fuzzy” pictures by fiddling with the set’s control menu, and much more.

KMS Lighthouse, another Israeli nominee, works in the area of customer service management — providing systems that allow customer service workers to get the answers to questions customers ask within seconds, with the aim of increasing customer satisfaction. The system analyzes data in a company knowledge system, indexing it and generating lists of keywords, synonyms, and cached data for instant access. KMS Lighthouse promises clients that with its system, customer service agents will be able to find the answers to 80% of queries within five seconds.

IronSource, also on the list, is a huge success story. Barely three years old, the company is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, with revenues said by analysts to be as much as $200 million a year. Over 100 million people a month use IronSource’s tech services, especially InstallCore, its software delivery platform for PC and mobile users.

Besides providing a secure and stable download platform, IronSource helps companies monetize the downloading process by providing an ad system for the download platform. IronSource’s growth has been remarkable; In January 2012, 40 people worked at the firm, and today there are 250, mostly at the company’s Tel Aviv R&D center, with a satellite staff at the company’s Silicon Valley sales office.

Another RH 100 nominee that has had a great year is Altair Semiconductor, which makes 4G (LTE) chipsets for devices. Last year, Altair worked out deals with cellphone service provider Verizon providing its FourGee-3100/6202 chipset to run Verizon’s LTE-enabled Ellipsis 7 tablet, the first-ever device marketed under Verizon Wireless’ own brand. In addition, Google is using Altair’s chips in new Chromebooks produced by Google and HP. And, Altair won the “Best Chipset/Processor Product” award at the 2013 LTE North America conference, considered the premiere 4G event in the US.

“Despite being up against some of the world’s most powerful chip vendors, a company from Hod Hasharon has been able to establish itself as the clear leader in the fast-growing single-mode LTE market,” said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development at Altair. “We are honored to be listed among the 30 Israeli finalists for the well-respected Red Herring Europe 100 award. Earning a place in this group reflects well not just on our company, but on the leadership, maturity and innovation of the Israeli high-tech sector at large.”

Most Popular
read more: