KeyPoint Technologies, a UK-based user interface technology solutions company, is in discussions with private equity players to infuse £5-7 million to fund its plans to enter the US and China markets.
The company will invite the first round of institutional investments shortly. It has so far been funded family and friends.
“We are planning to close the deal by June. We will use the proceeds to expand our presence in the North American and Chinese markets,” Sumit Goswami, Chief Executive Officer of KeyPoint Technologies, told Business Line .
Though the idea emanated out of the US, the company had started its formal operations in Glasgow (the UK) in 2008 to cater to the growing needs of linguistic support in the form of keypads to the IT gadget companies. It launched its commercial operations in 2011 as they supported Nokia’s ‘qwerty’ initiative.
The company has 170 employees, including 100 in Hyderabad. Majority of them are linguistic experts, developing all language-related solutions for the digital world.
Apps to turn local A leader in the keypad solutions space, KeyPoint is in talks with OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to convert all the apps into local languages. “They key for increasing penetration of mobile gadgets is to provide all the applications in local languages. After developing keypads for about 110 languages, we are now planning to diversify. We are going to convert the interfaces of Apps and, if agreed upon, the content and manage it for them,” he said.
KeyPoint has identified a problem the mobile and tablet users face as they key in SMSes and mails. “Each time you want to insert a smiley to bring emotions into the messages, you are forced to enter the library and pick an image and click it. In order to reduce time, we have launched Wink It that throws up ‘prompts’ as you key in messages,” he said.
For example, when you type ‘LoL’ (laughing loudly) a smiley appears in the prompt scroll. You can choose relevant smileys as you wish. The Wink It library also contains images of objects such as fruits.
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