Kandou: when innovative science and entrepreneurship meet
Harm Cronie and Amin Shokrollahi © Alain Herzog / EPFL
High-tech start-up company Kandou Technologies has just raised USD 10 million. Professor Shokrollahi gives us his recipe for success: smart, fast and energy-efficient.
Co-founded in 2011 by former postdoc Harm Cronie and Professor Amin Shokrollahi, Kandou Technologies SA has just won the jackpot. Both founders come from the Algorithmics Laboratory (ALGO), which is part of the EPFL’s School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC).
The start-up company has developed technology that reduces the energy consumption of electronic devices (e.g. cell phones, laptops or servers) by 25%-30% while increasing bit rates to peripherals (e.g. external hard drives, printers, monitors) by nearly 400%. “The underlying principles can be applied to a wide range of electronic devices. We expect to create several spin-off companies from this discovery,” says Amin Shokrollahi. “This is partly why we managed to secure strong financial backing: the potential projects emerging from this new technology are numerous.” Accordingly, the firm intends to drastically increase the number of employees in the coming months.
Another powerful factor is that Steve Papa is on board. He was the founder and CEO of Endeca Technologies Inc., which was sold to Oracle for USD 1.1 billion. Having such a successful entrepreneur as a close mentor is a strong guarantee for investors.
Why the name Kandou? “Kandou means beehive in Farsi, my mother tongue,” explains Amin Shokrollahi. “Like bees that work together towards a common goal, the communication wires in a Kandou signaling scheme work to compensate for errors and interference during high-speed data transmission.”
If bees are also a metaphor for sustainability, there is no doubt that Kandou Technologies – already a hive of activity – will keep on making a buzz!