Australia discovered ElSight: 310% rise in 4 months
CEO of the technology company: "We know how to take any type of data, decompose it and simultaneously send through many channels, and each part is encrypted separately"
Shiri Haviv Waldhorn
Four months ago, Israeli technology company Elsight undergone an IPO on the Australian stock exchange, raising AUD 5 million at a company value of AUD 20 million. For the past three months, the company's share has been hovering around the issue price (about AUD 0.2), but in the last few weeks there has been a turnaround: the share has risen steadily and recorded gains that led it to AUD 0.82, more than four times the issue price. ElSight's market value is AUD 68 million, about ILS 190 million.
ElSight was founded in 2009 by Nir Gabai, who serves as CEO, and Roee Kashi, who both served in the IDF's intelligence unit. The company developed a real-time data streaming system capable of sending and receiving encrypted data from anywhere in the world. The company began its way in the security market and its customers include the Israeli security forces. For several years, it was limited in its ability to export its solutions, but today, as CEO Gabay and director David Furstenberg tell "Globes", the company not only markets its products worldwide but also expands to new markets beyond the defense market. The company's chairman is Major General (res.) Ami Shafran, former head of the IDF IT Department and head of staff of Shaul Mofaz when he served as chief of staff of the IDF.
"We developed a system that significantly expands the bandwidth of the cellular world, and knows how to provide a significant security solution," says Gabay. "We can take any kind of data, decompose it and send it simultaneously on many channels, each part of which is encrypted separately, and we get a significant expansion of the bandwidth that works with 8 Sims instead of one, and the fact that we separate the data to many channels makes it very hard even for the superpowers and terrorist organizations to intercept the information. For that reason we were also selected to provide security solutions for President Trump's visit to Israel. " The company recently won a tender for the Israel Police, the Israeli Prison Services and the Israeli National Fire and Rescue Authority.
Gabay adds: "If we know how to create very high bandwidth and information security, why not provide a solution also for an ambulance, for example, that can transmit the patient's condition to a remote medical team? An example of an activity vertical, where we just recently reached a € 6 million deal with a French customer "
According to Gabay, the various markets in which the company is expanding include the world of drones, which can be connected to a "backpack" that includes ElSight's solution, allowing them to transmit in real time to command and control centers or to Facebook, for example; and the world of broadcast and television, which allows a television reporter to broadcast without the need to send a TV broadcasting vehicle and a whole crew of people.
But it seems that what ignites investors' imagination in particular is another market, the Autonomous Vehicle Market. "The future autonomous vehicles will need to communicate with each other, and this communication is one of the biggest challenges in the industry, because if a hacker can control it, it can produce a mega-accident on the highway," says Furstenberg.
"The world is looking for, among other things, the solution of very secure communications, and we think that our solution is the best in this field." According to him, Israel has a significant center of importance for companies in the field of autonomous vehicles, and there is room to create cooperative ventures that will help create a competitive advantage.
Furstenberg believes that the company has a very mature technology, which fits its definition of "a series of vertices that cry out to the sky in the need to find a solution." One of the company's biggest challenges is to make the right decisions as to what to focus on.
As of the first half of 2017, ElSight is not profitable. Its revenues grew by 20% to $ 402,000, but it lost $ 1.5 million. "The company can certainly be profitable, but it is growing substantially because we have a very, very big business opportunity, which is one of the things that makes ElSight interesting for investors," Furstenberg said.