Fast contact search puts Israeli start-up on Fortune 500 map
SphereUp’s technology helps users wade through the morass of names, phone numbers, and email addresses, to find the person they need almost instantaneously
Yevgeny Safovich (Photo credit: Courtesy)
In a world where patience is at a premium, and
where information on almost any topic can be found instantaneously –
thanks to the Internet – tracking down individuals can still be a
time-consuming chore. There’s really been no equivalent to a Google
search for contacts, whether you’re on your own or in an academic or
business institution.
Until Israeli start-up SphereUp
came up with one, that is – enabling users to do lightning-fast
searches for individuals based on name, job description, location, or
any other significant attribute. SphereUp’s approach is so unique that
the company has been drawing attention from corporations, hospitals,
universities, investors – and some of the biggest data companies in the
world, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Although SphereUp CEO Yevgeny Safovich
wouldn’t confirm any of the rumors that sites with large numbers of
members — like Facebook or LinkedIn — have expressed interest in
partnering with SphereUp, the fact is that several high-profile
investors who have “been around” the tech scene have invested
significant amounts in the company, in the belief that SphereUp is a
start-up with a big future. In its most recent funding round, SphereUp
raised $2.5 million, with financing led by US investment fund AJJS
Holdings, managed by CEO Alex Jurovitsky and Jacob Shochat, who sold
Dynamic Imaging to GE Healthcare in 2007, along with Ofer Ben-Shachar,
who founded Java software platform NetDynamics and sold the company to
Sun Microsystems (since acquired by Oracle).
SphereUp’s specialty, said Safovich, is “smart
contact search,” which means giving users the ability to find anyone on
a website, smart phone, contact database, or any other information
source with a quick, easy search on any website or other user interface.
For example, if you were searching for a doctor on a hospital website —
where there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of contact names to
wade through — SphereUp will let you search by name, specialty,
department, or any other criteria. The search is nearly instantaneous,
with SphereUp indexing all the relevant information using its patented
system.
One of the big advantages of SphereUp is its
ability to eliminate duplicates and triplicates in contact lists, a
chronic aspect of nearly all contact collections. Often, business users
will have five or six entries for the same person, with different phone
numbers (some outdated), email addresses, and other contact information.
Sorting through the data and figuring out which one is the “right”
person can be a frustrating experience, to say the least.
But SphereUp has the ability to parse through
the relevant sources and aggregate the information, letting users have
quick access to all contact information, displaying it on one screen.
“We can collect data from unstructured sources as well as organized
databases, eliminating duplicates and displaying only the relevant
data.” The information displayed is just about everything available
associated with the person being searched — phone numbers, email,
photos, websites, etc., said Safovich.
Safovich (former r&d group manager at
Comverse) and his founding partner Ronen Abramov began SphereUp in 2009,
but only started marketing the service in the past year or so. Since
then, the company has landed numerous high-profile Israeli clients,
including Leumit Health Funds, FedEx Israel, the Wolfson Medical Center,
and others.
Meanwhile, word is getting out to the rest of
the world about SphereUp, said Safovich. “We expect to soon be signing
contracts with some large companies in the US. Many large enterprise
firms are interested in our technology.” And those Facebook or LinkedIn
sale rumors? “I really can’t say anything about that, but we are getting
a very positive reputation among Fortune 500 companies. They see our
technology on other websites, and they are interested in it for
themselves. Companies like Facebook and LinkedIn, where users have many
contacts, would benefit greatly from our technology. I am sure we will
find a way to work with them.”
No comments:
Post a Comment