Company

1. What about the name?
priv-ID is shorthand for Private Identity Matching, which is the core of our proposition.

2. How is it pronounced?
The word “privacy” is pronounced differently in UK English [privəsi:] and USA English [praivəsi:]. However, the pronunciation of “Private Identity Matching” is the same everywhere, and this is how we also pronounce the short-hand version: priv-ID [praiv ai di:], with the emphasis on the [di:].

3. What is the background of the company
priv-ID is a spin-out from Royal Philips Electronics (www.philips.com). Work on biometrics started in Philips Research in 2002; in total 30+ man-years were invested to build the concepts of privacy respecting biometrics, culminating in the spin-out in October 2008. Prime Technology Ventures (www.ptv.com) is the lead investor.

4. Why didn’t Philips retain 100% ownership of the technology
Philips has decided to focus its activities on Healthcare, Lifestyle and Lighting and to migrate from being a technology company to a marketing company. Biometrics technology didn’t fit that strategic filter. The independence of priv-ID fits in the same strategic move category as the independence of Philips Semiconductors a few years earlier, now NXP (albeit on a different scale of magnitude).

5. What does Ashara mean?
In Amharic (Ethiopian language), Ashara means “Biometric print".