baimos technologies, the Munich, Germany-based company behind BlueID technology – the digital key ring for smartphones, recently raised a seven digit funding round from first class investors. After some weeks, CEO Philipp P. Spangenberg answered our questions about the company, the product, the funding and future plans.
FinSMEs: Hi Philipp, can you please tell me more about your career background?
Philipp: I have been in the mobile security solutions sector for more than 15 years. Back in 2000, I founded my first business, called PPS-Systems. As I regard myself as being an expert in smartphone security, mobile apps and encryption technology, I consult and offer advice on behalf of large companies in the automotive and IT sectors. In 2006, I joined baimos technologies as CEO. In this position, my responsibilities are to manage the Commercial and Technical business units. Baimos technologies was founded as a university project at the TU München. Because of my experience in my former company, I took the role as the technical leader to drive the project.
FinSMEs: Let’s speak about baimos technologies. What problems do you want to solve?
Philipp: Baimos technologies specialises in secure mobile communication and authorisation management for smart devices to enable secure interaction with embedded sensors and actuators. Our team of specialists has developed software that can turn any smartphone into a secure mobile key to operate doors, cars, barriers, cabinets or basically anything related to Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Our main goal is to make keys and electronic key systems obsolete, by using nothing but your smartphone to open doors. We can provide cross-disciplinary expertise between computer science and electrical engineering, to achieve the best possible level of security and practical interaction of embedded systems within their smart environment.
FinSMEs: Can you explain in detail what BlueID does? Which applications can it enable?
Philipp: BlueID is a highly secure technology which enables authorization management via smartphone. Basically, we help provider to authenticate the user at physical objects by granting secure temporary keys into their apps. The software makes it possible to receive sensitive authorizations in a secure manner and these can be verified locally and most importantly offline. Our patent-protected offline functionality is the main advantage in the market of identification technologies. It ensures local communication, authentication and authorization – offline and within one second. BlueID provides strong security for digital keys stored on the smartphone, but does not require additional secure elements on the device itself. It works with all communication standards such as Bluetooth Smart, NFC, WiFi and of course, mobile internet.
FinSMEs: Where are you in terms of growth?
Philipp: As we have analysed the market and the pace of development in our sector, we expect the technology to hit its peak in the next 2-3 years. We would like to grow around 20 percent in 2016. In terms of partnerships, we have been working with several big industry players such as Audi, Daimler, Marquardt, Novero, LG, Dorma and Microsoft.
FinSMEs: You just raised a seven digit funding round. How are you using the funds?
Philipp: Since IoT is just starting to develop and the needs for our technology are not even close to their peak, we want to focus on company growth now. We are eager to make BlueID the most reliable and most successful solution in this sector. This new funding will therefore be reinvested into driving our ideas down the road of success, until the lights are all green.
FinSMEs: What are your future plans?
Philipp: There are constant changes in the market and due to political regulations, it is nearly impossible to predict the future. But of course we have a clear vision and a focused plan for BlueID. Our solutions are safe and easy to implement into existing systems. This makes our products especially interesting to hotels or shared spaces with many different users and numerous doors to manage. We can basically provide a solution to everyone who interacts with smart devices.
Gartner predicts that IoT will change cyber security forever; we don’t want to wait for trial and error solutions, but instead want to come up with a practical approach for all interactions in the IoT space. We seek to be the future security stamp in the IoT sector, always one step ahead of our competitors, offering the strongest security and the easiest usage possible.
FinSMEs
14/03/2016