- Startup captures imaging technology for licensing
- Washington Business Journal
- By Ben Hammer - Staff Reporter
Aguru Images Inc, is starting to see its future develop.
The company was formed in March by venture capital firm Angle Technology Ventures LLC with $1.5 million in funding. It will sell high-resolution commercial digital imaging hardware and software for animation, special effects, computer gaming and design.
Aguru Images currently has a temporary office in D.C. but plans to move into permanent space in Alexandria June 1.
The company expects to sign licensing agreements by mid-June to use research technologies developed and owned by New York University, the University of Southern California and Mitusbishi Corp. Aguru Images will finish production of each of its three camera models by the end of June.
Meanwhile, it is trying to round out a small executive team with a permanent CEO.
The company has developed models of commercial digital imaging hardware- a large camera, a flatbed scanner that recreates depth of texture on a flat surface and a device that measures the reflection of light on materials from different angles-that range from $8,000 to $100,000 and above. The devices record 3-D images with 15 times the resolution of a 1,200 dots-per inch picture and capture how the objects reflect light so Aguru Image’s software can create computer graphics showing the ways an image will look in different light and from other angles. The resulting files are 12,800 times larger than a 5-megapixel digital camera can record.
The software can manipulate the large image files to show how an object might appear under various conditions, such as a change in lighting or slight variations in design or aging over the course of time. The company plans to sell or lease the equipment, invite companies into its own lab to produce images or have Aguru Images do it for them. A library of images will be available for a fee.
“The ideas is to have something for everybody,” said Chief Operating Officer Saul Orbach. “Nobody gets left out of the loop.”
Aguru Images’ software and hardware cuts across several different market sectors, which is why it is likely to face lots of competition. The company plans to exhibit alongside 25 other businesses in the 3-D rapid prototyping product category at the International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in August.
Orbach has a heavy hitter alongside him in interim CEO and Chief Technology Officer Craig Miller.
Miller is the former chief scientist at SAIC Inc. of San Diego and the former CTO of Proxicom of Reston, an Internet consulting group that went public in 1999 and sold for more than $420 million in 2001 to Dimension Data Holdings PLC of London. He is also the former CTO of Gridpoint Inc., of New York and others for technology use by utilities and homeowners to use energy more efficiently.
Aguru Images’ backer Angle Technology Ventures hopes the company will prove its own investment thesis. Angle Technology Ventures is the U.S. investment arm of U.K.-based Angle PLC. It finds and licenses intellectual property from universities and research organizations, and it creates businesses to commercialize the technology.
“That’s not something that a regular VC would do,” said Gary Evans, CEO of Angle’s U.S. operations. “And it’s not something that many other people are in a position to do.” Though based in Charlottesville, Va., Angle Technology Ventures is represented locally by Lisa Smith. She is looking now for office space in the Washington area. In 2005, Angle Technologies Ventures funded the creation of Rockville-based Aberro Inc., which sells automated software testing application.