Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Illume Software adds $1M to launch iZUP mobile phone app

By Rodney H. Brown

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Concord-based Illume Software reports it raised $1 million in new funding to boost development of the company’s main product, iZUP, a technology that can lock out a mobile phone from receiving or sending calls or text messages while the user is driving.

The new funding, which comes from unnamed private investors, adds to the previous round of $2.4 million Illume closed in February of 2009.

The iZUP application uses the GPS technology in a mobile phone to send information back to a control server that can determine whether or not a phone user is driving. If so, the phone locks out any calls or texts, saving them on the server until such time as the user has stopped driving, according to Illume CEO Matthew Growney.

The market for the application is parents who wish to keep their children from engaging in unsafe distracted driving. The iZUP app will allow for three emergency numbers determined by the parent that can be dialed, as well as calls to 911.

According to officials, the iZUP application will be available as a free public beta version later this fall, and will launch in December on Windows Mobile, Google Android and Blackberry phones.

While iZUP is a downloadable application, Growney would like it to be a feature built right into the phone.

“Part of our goal longer term is that next year we will work in an embedded environment with the OEMs,” Growney said. “We want to be ahead of the curve and not in the download. We want to be embedded in the stack.”

By getting built into handsets, the iZUP application can move from being just available to smartphones, to availability also on feature phones, Growney said, opening up the market significantly and reaching more parents and teenage drivers.

Growney, who is founder and managing partner of Rudyard Partners in Concord, is the former co-founder of Motorola Ventures, the Lexington-based venture arm of mobile communications giant Motorola Inc. Rudyard is an investor in Illume Software.