National Post

Robert Bosch Venture Capital leads $3.75 million Series A round for Flybits

Toronto start-up to advance context-aware mobile experience platform

Flybits Corporate LogoTORONTO, Canada (August 20, 2014) — Flybits Inc., a Toronto start-up that has created a context-aware experience development platform for mobile environments, has closed a $3.75 million Series A financing. Led by Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC) and Trellis Capital Corporation with participation from MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund and Ryerson Futures, Inc., the investment will advance the company’s product development and international growth in the United States and Europe.

This announcement was covered in the National Post, TechVibes, Fortune Magazine‘s Term Sheet Blog (Dan Primack), BetaKit, Yonge Street Media and PEHub.

Since spinning off from Ryerson University in 2012, Flybits has raised a total of $4.05 million to date, including a seed round from MaRS Innovation. Flybits technology has been used in developing smarter cities, connected stadiums, smart corporate campuses, shopping malls, conference venues and even fashion shows. The company also concurrently incubated its technology at the Ryerson Digital Media Zone in Toronto and Vodafone Xone in Redwood City, California.

“Flybits is RBVC’s first investment in Canada,” said Luis Llovera, managing director of Robert Bosch LLC based in Palo Alto, California. “The company has demonstrated a unique and innovative approach in building foundational technology to deliver Contextual Mobility Services for both display-driven devices and for the emerging Internet of Things applications. Flybits’ strong roots in tangible and high impact R&D, their ability to predict the required infrastructure for the industrial Internet and their global entrepreneurial ambitions were some of the reasons we were attracted to this company.”

“Involving high-quality investors such as Bosch and Trellis demonstrates the potential in our unique approach to designing Intelligent Mobility Solutions that are intuitive and scalable,” said Dr. Hossein Rahnama, CEO and founder of Flybits. “In particular, having Bosch as a strategic investor means we leverage their global expertise in software automation, connected communities and sensor technologies as we support new and existing international customers, and scale and develop both our team and our products.”

“Recognizing the Flybits’ platform potential to create next-generation mobile experiences at an early stage, MaRS Innovation worked closely with Flybits to launch the company and secure initial market traction,” said Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation.

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WaveCheck campaign part of new study on crowdfunding medical research

MI’s Fazila Seker also interviewed in National Post article on what prompts medical researchers to consider crowdfunding

WavecheckThe WaveCheck crowdfunding campaign, which raised $53,390 on Indiegogo to support clinical trials for a clinical technique invented by researchers at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Ryerson University, was included in a new Canadian-led study on the merits of crowdfunding to support cancer and rare diseases.

“Crowdfunding drug development: The state of play in oncology and rare diseases,” was published in Drug Discovery Today‘s June issue.

MaRS Innovation has confirmed with lead author Professor Nick Dragojlovic of the University of British Columbia that WaveCheck was among the campaigns included in the study.

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Thotra Receives National Post and Hindustan Times Coverage for Speech Transformation Technology

Thotra’s speech transformation technology to improve  comprehension in call centres and transcription services worldwide

Thotra logoOn October 11, 2013, The Hindustan Times covered a technology developed by UTEST start-up graduate Thotra (invented by Frank Rudzicz) for its speech-transformation software.

The article commends Thotra for recognizing the communications gap surrounding accents, hailing the technology as the solution to “put an end to all accent problems.”

On October 2, 2013, Thotra’s technology was also covered in the National Post:

The software, which filters out aspects of speech that can hinder comprehension, is put to the test by processing lines from Colin Firth in the movie The King’s Speech. The results showcase the potential of the software and how it can assist comprehension of accents.

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Cellax profiled in SciBX; MaRS Innovation’s MSc PoP program cited in National Post supplement

CellaxThe Cellax technology was profiled in a recent issue of  SciBX (subscription necessary). MaRS Innovation is mentioned in the article as the technology’s commercialization agent.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Ontario Institute for Cancer Research scientists have developed glycopolymer-conjugated docetaxel nanoparticles that outperform Abraxane in mouse models of breast cancer. The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) is backing the program with $1.5 million to take it to the clinic. The expectation is that the product’s ability to target the tumor stroma rather than the tumor itself will differentiate it from Abraxane and other chemotherapeutic formulations.”

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Financial Post profiles OtoSim Inc.’s innovative medical learning device

OtoSim Inc. Logo“If there’s one profession for which you don’t want students to have learning gaps, it’s medicine,” Rebecca Walberg wrote in the Smart Shift: Agenda for Innovation section in the Financial Post on May 7 (reprinted in the Vancouver Sun on May 9 and in the Calgary Herald on June 6, 2013). “Yet that’s exactly what Dr. Paolo Campisi saw while working with medical students at the University of Toronto.”

Walberg’s article, “Innovation in medical learning a Canadian business success story,” describes the process Campisi and his colleague and co-founder Dr. Vito Forte, both of the Hospital for Sick Children and cross-appointed to U of T, undertook to design the OtoSim device, which addresses the gap in how students were learning skills associated with otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat diseases or infections).

Here’s an excerpt (beginning with a quote from Dr. Forte):

“The answer wasn’t more time to lecture or show big pictures on a screen, but rather some kind of instrument that would mimic the experience of looking into an ear with an otoscope. And we went through a number of prototypes developing a simulator that can do just that.”

The result is the OtoSim, brought to market and sold by OtoSim Inc. The simulator consists of a rubber ear made to scale, and a computer display integrated into the model where the eardrum would be in a patient, which can display images of ear canals that correspond to a wide range of medical conditions.

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National Post: How does Canada solve its commercialization conundrum?

Government has key role to play as early-stage technology adopter says CEO Raphael Hofstein

Dr. Raphael Hofstein
Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president & CEO, MaRS Innovation.

Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation, was quoted in Mary Theresa Bitti‘s National Post article, “Commercialization Conundrum: Canada must turn ideas into social and economic value,” published April 3, 2013.

The article examines Canada’s worsening track record in realizing commercialization gains based on the country’s significant per-capita investment in R&D.

Here’s an excerpt:

While Canada punches above its weight class when it comes to generating ideas — witness countless academic journals showcasing Canadian research — as a country, we are experiencing a failure to launch when it comes to commercializing those ideas and getting them to market. The Jenkins panel report on innovation spelled it out quite clearly, “Too many of the big ideas [Canada] generates wind up generating wealth for others.” Canada ranks 14th out of 17 peer countries when it comes to innovation, even though on a per-capita basis, our $7-billion federal annual investment into research and development (R&D) is far more generous than other OECD nations. The result: Our global competitiveness continues to slide. According to the World Economic Forum, Canada has dropped to 14th place in 2012 from 10th in 2010.

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VP Joel Liederman: MaRS Innovation, Canadian Research and the Commercialization Test

Joel Liederman, vice-president of business development and physical sciences
Joel Liederman, MI’s vice-president of business development and physical sciences

Joel Liederman, MaRS Innovation’s vice-president of Business Development and Physical Sciences, was quoted in a National Post article, published August 13, probing whether Canadian research is passing the commercialization test.

Here’s an excerpt:

While academics have often been accused of being disconnected from the real world and consuming themselves with the theoretical, it’s hard to imagine they would be able to get away with squandering funding dollars on things that make them go hmmm, particularly in light of the hyper focus on fiscal prudence.

Indeed, those who are intimately involved in attempting to bridge the commercialization gap agree that the old system of leaving university professors to their own devices had long ago been shelved in favour of a more judicious approach.

Joel Liederman, vice president of Business Development and Physical Sciences at MaRS Innovation, says there’s no doubt that much of the R&D being performed in Canada never makes it past the patent stage, but not because its origins were founded on theory instead of commercial need.

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