HistoIndex Wins IBM SmartCamp KickStart ASEAN

Petaling Jaya, 24 Sept 2012 – IBM (NYSE: IBM) has named HistoIndex Pte Ltd the winner of SmartCamp KickStart ASEAN, a competition for startup companies. The competition is designed to identify outstanding early stage entrepreneurs who are developing business ventures that align with IBM Smarter Planet vision. These startups are part of a growing group of entrepreneurs using technology to drive innovation in a variety of industries.
 
As the planet becomes interconnected through sensors and smart devices, the ability to gain insight from massive volumes of data represents a significant opportunity for businesses such as Histoindex, a products and services provider in the area of medical diagnostics.

HistoIndex provide researchers with cutting edge tools and hospital with reliable techniques to assist in speedy and accurate diagnosis of fibrosis. This winning start up is a spin-off company from Singapore’s A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research), specifically from Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.

According to Sun Wenting, the company's imaging scientist, “HistoIndex joined SmartCamp Kickstart to reach out to a broader audience and being a technology company, IBM's SmartCamp is a suitable platform. Our advice for other startups is to know your customers well – in fact know them better than your potential competitors,” said Sun.

 HistoIndex is one of the world's first company to offer clinicians, researchers and drug development companies, a quantitative technology that can visualize cell morphology and matrix distribution without the need for staining. The company also provides computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) software and an extensive database of prior studies to aid clinical research and drug efficacy evaluation.
                       
SmartCamp Kickstart ASEAN finals event was held in Singapore earlier this month. The event brought together a panel of judges including IBM senior executives and industry experts from the worlds of technology, entrepreneurship, academia and venture capital. The judges selected the winner based on their innovative technology, solid business plan, and alignment with IBM’s Smarter Planet strategy.

Histoindex was among the six (6) finalists that included Firegent iASP from Malaysia, Innova Technology, Vitastrak, and Zweec Analytics from Singapore, along with Technobaik Informedia from Indonesia.

Firegent iASP was incorporated with the single focus to design document-processing systems with “human-like” abilities for corporations to automatically organize and capture specified data from documents. The central idea is to perform these tasks without the need for barcodes, special keywords, specific page layouts or blank page separators but with the accuracy and speed that surpasses human capabilities.

The Firegent’s XGen system is an automated document processing system designed to re-imagine how documents should be processed. By infusing “human-like processing traits” into the system, it is able to identify, capture structured data and the relationships between data.

 Firegent’s XGen system is a Smart Document Assistant that identify, sort and arrange documents by analyzing its content. The system performs all these tasks without the traditional restrictive requirements of barcodes, special keywords, specific page layouts nor blank page separators.

In its inaugural year, the IBM SmartCamp KickStart ASEAN was well received with more than 100 submissions from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

“Innovative startups are essential to building a Smarter Planet and these talented entrepreneurs will help us provide our clients with new solutions,” said Vincent Ler, Business Unit Executive, ISV and Developer Relations, IBM ASEAN. “The submissions that we received were very innovative which made the selection rather challenging. HistoIndex’ solution clearly stood out as the society stands to benefit from it and it is also aligned with IBM's Smarter Planet messaging.”

The SmartCamp KickStart program is part of IBM’s Global Entrepreneur Program. The competition brings together startup companies with technology experts, venture capitalists and serial entrepreneurs for mentoring and development.  Participating companies will have access to support and resources in terms of products, people, and promotion.

Startup winner HistoIndex will go on to compete in the IBM SmartCamp Asia in Beijing, China. The global finals will be held next year in the US.

 Past participants have captured the attention of the venture capital community and gone on to rapidly expand and drive innovation in their industry. In fact, the 2010 and 2011 finalists have gone on to raise more than $60 million in venture capital funding since their SmartCamp participation. In addition, companies such as Sproxil and Streetline have worked with IBM to develop and go to market with new solutions.

IBM SmartCamps bring together innovative entrepreneurs with venture capitalists, academics and other industry leaders to provide coaching and critical industry support and advice. Winning companies receive mentoring, services, access to industry experts, and deeper partnership opportunities from IBM, VCs (venture capitalists) and industry partners.

IBM SmartCamp events are being held around the world. For more information on the Global Entrepreneur Program or to apply to an event visit: http://www.ibm.com/isv/startup.

 For more information on the IBM Venture Capital Group, please visit http://www.ibm.com/venturecapitalgroup.