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The following is issued on behalf of the Applied Research Council:

The Applied Research Council (ARC) announced today (Thursday) that it has invested US$2 million in InfoTalk Corporation Limited (InfoTalk), a technology company that specialises in the development of multi-lingual speech recognition technologies, including Cantonese, English and Putonghua.

The investment is made through Walden International Investment Group (WIIG), one of the three venture capital firms appointed by the ARC in November 1998 to manage the Applied Research Fund. Other funds managed by WIIG also co-invest in this company, bringing the total investment in InfoTalk to US$4 million.

InfoTalk is a technology company established in Hong Kong in 1996 by a team of experienced professionals who returned to Hong Kong from the US. InfoTalk's primary business goal is to develop and market speech recognition technologies that will enable people to communicate with information by simply talking over the phone anywhere at any time.

"The market for this real-time, over-the-telephone speech recognition technology is emerging and is expanding rapidly as the technology matures. Application into industries like telecom, banking, brokerage, airlines and public utilities could see tremendous benefits using this technology," said Mr Alex Leung, co-founder of InfoTalk.

"InfoTalk has the potential to become a leading Asian language speech recognition technology player. WIIG will utilise its extensive Asia and US presence to help InfoTalk roll out its products," commented Mr K O Chia, Vice-President of WIIG.

Shortly after its establishment in 1996, InfoTalk was admitted as an incubatee under the Technology-based Business Incubation Programme of the Hong Kong Industrial Technology Centre Corporation (HKITCC). It also received funding support from the Innovation Loan Scheme run by the HKITCC.

"The investment in InfoTalk exemplifies the mission of the ARC, which is to support technology ventures and applied R&D work in Hong Kong," remarked the Chairman of the ARC, Dr Cheng Hon-kwan.

"InfoTalk is a technology start-up company and specialises in an area where Hong Kong has a potential niche," he said.

"Apart from the funding, InfoTalk will be able to benefit from the strategic, marketing, networking and management support that will be provided by WIIG," added Dr Cheng.

The ARC is a company wholly-owned by the HKSAR Government to administer and manage the HK$750 million Applied Research Fund, a scheme which provides funding support to local companies undertaking technology ventures. Since November 1998, the management of the Fund has been entrusted to three private sector venture capital firms.

WIIG is an international venture capital group with over US$1 billion under management.

The investment in InfoTalk is the fifth one made by the ARC since the contracting out of the management of the Applied Research Fund in November 1998. The earlier four investments are in the fields of information technology and telecommunication networking. The five investments involve a total funding of over HK$85 million.

End/Thursday, 11 March, 1999

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