Gimv and Sofinnova lead €11.2m Inside deal

Francois Rowell
07 May 2010

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Gimv and Sofinnova Partners have led an €11.2m round-D investment in open-standard contactless chip company Inside Contactless alongside existing shareholders and Fonds Stratégique d’Investissement (FSi).

The investment will help finance the acquisition of Secure Microcontroller Solutions (SMS) from US-based Ateml Corporation.

Previous investment
In April 2009, Qualcomm Ventures provided Inside Contactless with a €4m investment, extending its third round to a total of €31.7m. The original third round investment of €27.7 included newcomers Motorola, Samsung, LG and Nokia, as well as previous investors Sofinnova Partners, Vertex Management, Vertex Ventures, Siparex, Gimv, EuroUS Venture, Granite Global Ventures, Visa Ventures and HID Global.

Prior to this, Granite Global Venture (GGV) led a €19.5m second round of financing alongside EuroUS Venture. The new investors contributed half the amount, while the other half was provided by the syndicate led by Sofinnova Partners and included Vertex Ventures, Vertex Management, GIMV and Siparex Ventures.

That syndicate of investors had previously invested €9.3m in 2005. In 2002, Vertex led a €5m seed round of funding in Inside Contactless alongside Nippon Investment Funds (NIF), Siparex, GIMV and Alta Berkley. The latter three investors were already shareholders in the business following a seed round of €5m. Sofinnova Partners is currently the largest shareholder in the company.

Company
Inside Contactless was founded in 1995 by Jacek Kolwalski and is headquartered in Aix-en-Provence. The firm, which specialises in semiconductors and wireless technology, designs and develops chips for payment and near-field communication applications.

Instead of requiring a reader with a contact, the company has developed a specific chip technology that makes it possible to establish secured wireless communication between devices such as mobile phones, as well as classical payment terminals and payment cards such as Visa or Mastercard.

People
Jean Schmitt of Sofinnova Partners serves as Vice Chairman on the board of the company. Rémy de Tonnac is the company CEO and Alex Brabers is Chairman.