Hong Kong's InfoTalk Corp has overcome the sceptical investment climate, raising US$12
million to expand the development of its multilingual speech recognition technology for telephones.
Founder and chief executive Alex Leung acknowledged it was difficult looking for money while technology was out of favour with investors, but maintained that good ideas would still attract positive attention.
'The market is certainly not as good as it was even six months ago, but this can still be the time for opportunity,' he said.
In its first round of funding two years ago, InfoTalk raised US$5 million. Mr Leung said the latest round met the company's expectations.
Major investments came from large financial institutions including imGO, Accenture Technology Ventures and HSBC Private Equity (Asia). Walden International, an investment group that had previously invested in InfoTalk, agreed to put in more money.
Mr Leung said he would use the investment to support more research and undertake a rapid expansion. In the past five months, InfoTalk has doubled its staff to between 120 and 150. It does research in Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing and lays claim to being the biggest Asian player in the speech recognition technology field.