Bringing Ideas to Life

About

Narra Venture Capital is a venture management and advisory group that has invested in private high-technology companies with potential for accelerated growth. Established in January 2002, it has focused its investments on companies with defensible barriers to competition, which are normally based on cutting edge technology or their efficient deployment.

In Silicon Valley and similar technology centers, Narra has invested in companies developing semiconductors and semiconductor-related products, converged communication systems, computing platforms, and software & related services. More recently, it has also made smaller investments on promising Internet startups. The firm works with Silicon Valley based partners like Tallwood Venture Capital.

In addition, Narra’s role is to help bring Asia to these investments through introductions to markets or partners. In the Philippines and around the Asian continent, Narra seeks companies that take advantage of the synergy with advanced technology companies. These companies are in software services, electronic manufacturing services, design services, and information systems that are more customized for developing regions.

Narra manages two venture capital funds and has an established group of founding Limited Partners led by Dado Banatao, Managing Partner of TallwoodVC, and Ayala Corporation, one of the Philippines’ most respected business conglomerates. The same investors were joined by First Philippine Holdings, Inc. and the Lhuillier Group for Narra Fund II, which was formed in March 2007.

Management

Paco Sandejas

Managing Partner

Paco Sandejas, Ph.D. is the Managing Partner of NarraVC. He also serves as the Managing Director of BGN Ventures, a Philippine-based management and consulting company focused on technology ventures in the same space as NarraVC.

During his stint as Vice-President of H&Q Asia Pacific, Paco was directly responsible for profitable returns on US$30 million of venture investments in the fields of communications, semiconductors, and internet infrastructure. He was a member or observer on the boards of various US and Philippine HQAP companies.

Paco was also responsible for Product Marketing and Management for Applied Komatsu Technology’s Etch Product Division. AKT is now the flat panel division of Applied Materials, the world’s largest semiconductor equipment supplier. He has also worked as an Engineering Consultant to MEMS and microdisplay companies.

He completed his Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and completed his Bachelor’s of Science of Degree in Applied Physics from the University of the Philippines in Diliman. At Stanford, Paco co-invented with Professors David Bloom and Olav Solagaard the world’s first Grating Light Valves, a silicon MEMS spatial light modulator.

The GLV is a fundamental technology that is being used by Silicon Light Machines (acquired by Cypress) and by Lightconnect for optical communication systems. The GLV is also being used by Sony to develop advanced display systems.

Paco is an active consultant with the Philippine Government and engineers to increase the economic contribution of IT companies to national growth. He sits on the board of Digital Philippines, and is part of the IT E-Commerce Council (ITECC) chaired by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. He is a co-founder of the Brain Gain Network, a web platform connecting the Filipino diaspora, making their ideas into realities to help spur the Philippines’ growth technologically and economically.

Ernie Tarroza

Vice-President & Principal, General Manager of Xepto Computing

Ernie Tarroza is NarraVC’s Vice President & Principal and General Manager of Xepto Computing. He has extensive experience in managing technical teams and has strong skills in analyzing customers and business requirements. Ernie has 18 years of solid experience in the field of Information Technology (IT) and is skilled in project and bid management.

He started out as a Science Research Specialist in the Philippines’ Department of Science and Technology’s (DOST) Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI) doing research and development activities in the areas of Information Technology and Microelectronics. While in ASTI, he also became its Chief Science Research Specialist working on R&D and technology transfer efforts in the field of advanced software i.e. multimedia, Internet, computer networking, embedded systems and signal processing.

Later on, Ernie joined Sun Microsystems Philippines, Inc., and was recognized as one of its outstanding employees. As the Senior Team Lead/ IT Architect, he provided direction for a team of technical consultants for solutions and IT architecture. He also managed a group of technical consultants and product managers to provide technical support for SunPhil’s sales team as presales head. He also worked for BEENET Singapore Pte. Ltd. managing a group of consultants in the areas of e-commerce and managed services.

Ernie finished a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of the Philippines- Diliman and earned his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering at the same institution where he was a consistent scholar. He also serves as a Senior Lecturer at his alma mater and teaches at the Ateneo de Manila University’s Physics Department.

Dan Wolbert

Entrepreneur-in-Residence

Dan Wolbert is a consultant for the Financial Services sector with Narra Venture Capital. He has 13 years of experience working across the sector focused on US-based and developing market opportunities. This experience has included payments, consumer and small business lending, retail banking and asset management.

Prior to his graduate studies, Dan began his career at Capital One, a US-based credit card issuer. During his time there Dan led multiple customer segmentation and marketing campaigns across the direct mail, e-mail and telemarketing channels. In addition he was responsible for managing the credit policy and extension of credit during the transaction authorization process.

Following graduate school Dan joined the management consulting firm McKinsey and Company. While at McKinsey, Dan worked primarily on Marketing and Segmentation, Strategy and Operations Transformation projects within the Financial Services sector. Select projects include retail banking branch sales force productivity, retail deposit pricing strategy, small business lending profitability, and call center efficiency

Most recently Dan was a member of the Corporate Strategy group at Visa Inc. During his time there Dan had the opportunity to work extensively on developing market opportunities. Select projects include commercialization of a mobile money platform, partnerships with domestic payment systems, and payment gateway growth strategy.

Dan has Masters’ degrees in Business Administration and Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Limited Partners

Investment Advisers

 

Tallwood Investment Partners, L.P.

Ayala Corporation

First Philippine Holdings

P.J. Lhullier Group

Brain Gain Network Limited

Dado Banatao

Managing Partner of
Tallwood Venture Capital

Portfolio

Alphion develops and manufactures innovative integrated photonic components for signal regeneration, conditioning, wavelength management, and monitoring. www.alphion.com

Amulaire, a thermal management company based in San Diego, California, offers heat dissipation products that effectively solve customers' thermal challenges, for both commercial and military applications. www.amulaire.com

Calypto Design Systems empowers designers to create the highest quality and lowest power electronic systems by providing best-in-class power optimization and functional verification products. www.calypto.com

Ikanos develops robust, high performance semiconductor and software products. Its advanced communications processors, broadband DSL and other devices power access infrastructure and customer premises equipment for many of the world’s leading network equipment manufacturers and telecommunications service providers. www.ikanos.com

Inphi delivers high-speed precision electronic components that enable equipment-makers to build the highest performance, most cost-competitive computing, communications, and instrumentation systems. www.inphi-corp.com

Phunware leads the mobile application revolution globally and is reinventing the mobile application experience for consumers. Phunware has introduced category-defining applications that challenge the outer limits of the best mobile devices on Earth and is defining the future standard for mobile application experiences. www.phunware.com

PSI Technologies, Inc. is the leading provider of power semiconductor assembly and test services to the power semiconductor market. The company provides comprehensive assembly and test services to a diverse customer base, which includes most of the major power semiconductor manufacturers in the world. www.psitechnologies.com

Stratpoint specializes in best-of-breed web and mobile technologies for consumer and enterprise applications. www.stratpoint.com

Quintic Corporation is a fabless semiconductor company that provides low-power cost-effective wireless connectivity solutions for consumer electronics, as well as personal computers and its peripherals. www.quinticcorp.com

News

Forbes Names Phunware One of America’s Most Promising Companies for Second Consecutive Year

January 29, 2015

Two-time win reinforces Phunware as critical player in the mobile and multiscreen space. Austin, TX (PRWEB) January 29, 2015 Phunware, the pioneer of Multiscreen as a Service... Read More

Two-time win reinforces Phunware as critical player in the mobile and multiscreen space.

Austin, TX (PRWEB) January 29, 2015

Phunware, the pioneer of Multiscreen as a Service (MaaS), the first fully integrated customer engagement platform that enables brands to engage, manage and monetize their anytime anywhere users worldwide, today announced that it was named one of America’s Most Promising Companies by Forbes for the second time in as many years. The two-time honor puts Phunware in distinguished company and reaffirms its mobile-first, native-first and fully integrated-first vision.

“Achieving Forbes’ ‘Most Promising’ status is a dream for any company, but achieving it two years running is simply remarkable,” commented Alan S. Knitowski, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Phunware. “This honor serves as evidence that the time is right for Phunware’s fully integrated platform approach.”

Forbes’ Most Promising Companies for 2015 are private, with less than $300 million in revenue. Aside from revenue, winners were evaluated on company leadership, hiring and revenue growth, capital raised, products and operating margins. With $23 million in 2014 revenue, 204 employees and a single-login mobile and multiscreen platform, Phunware was highly competitive. Its 2014 and 2015 “Most Promising” rankings are # 36 and # 58, respectively.

For more information about Phunware, current and upcoming products and solutions and case studies from Phunware’s impressive list of global customers, please visit http://www.phunware.com.

About Phunware

Phunware is the pioneer of Multiscreen as a Service (MaaS), the first fully integrated customer engagement platform that enables brands to engage, manage and monetize their anytime anywhere users worldwide. Phunware, The Software of Things™, has introduced category-defining experiences that challenge the outer limits of the most advanced connected devices for the world’s most respected brands and develops next-generation products and solutions that transform how the world interacts with and uses these connected devices.

Phunware has a 5-year percentage growth of 17,716% and is a back-to-back Top 100 award winner on both the Inc. 500 list of America’s Fastest Growing Companies and the Forbes list of America’s Most Promising Companies. Phunware is also currently ranked # 4 on the 2014 Deloitte Technology Fast 500. For more information about how Phunware provides Everything You Need to Succeed on Mobile™, please visit http://www.phunware.com and follow

 

Source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/01/prweb12480507.htm

ST&T picks Ikanos processor for smart-home platform

January 5, 2015

Ikanos Communications, a provider of advanced broadband semiconductor and software products for the connected home, announced that ST&T, a broadband products provider, selected... Read More

Ikanos Communications, a provider of advanced broadband semiconductor and software products for the connected home, announced that ST&T, a broadband products provider, selected the Ikanos Fusiv Vx500 family chipset for its next generation of high-performance gateway platforms targeting a range of home automation, monitoring and other smart-home applications.

ST&T has a track record of providing home automation products to top global OEMs and carriers, including Honeywell, AT&T and NTT. ST&T will port its smart-home software stack onto the Fusiv Vx575 gateway processor, and will use the architecture and its acceleration engines to leverage its software investment into multiple carrier and retail products.

ST&T’s gateway platform will enable the consumer to take an active role in home automation and control, including monitoring and managing home energy consumption and key home security features, directly from their smart phone or tablet devices at any time. ST&T will also implement Ikanos’ iTSS, an embedded software platform that takes advantage of Fusiv’s acceleration processors.

Built around the Ikanos Fusiv family of multi-mode broadband-gateway chipsets, iTSS takes advantage of all the benefits of the chipsets’ native features, including flexible WAN interfaces, dual-band concurrent Wi-Fi with gigabit performance, line-rate Ethernet support and carrier-grade voice. iTSS also provides complete network management modules, a full voice SIP stack, and end-user features such as home network topology mapping.

Source: http://www.telecompaper.com/news/standt-picks-ikanos-processor-for-smart-home-platform–1057925

Stratpoint COO Elected to PSIA Board

March 6, 2014

MANILA, Philippines, March 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Mary Rose "MR" dela Cruz, Chief Operating Officer at Stratpoint( http://www.stratpoint.com ), has been elected as a member of the 2014 Board... Read More

MANILA, Philippines, March 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Mary Rose “MR” dela Cruz, Chief Operating Officer at Stratpoint( http://www.stratpoint.com ), has been elected as a member of the 2014 Board of Directors of the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA). PSIA is a nonprofit organization that promotes the growth and global competitiveness of the Philippine software industry and represents the biggest alliance of software development enterprises in the Philippines.

MR was elected to the Execom as Treasurer and will chair the committee on Information and Research. She will also be working hand in hand with other members of the board to support PSIA’s capability development committee that aims to increase the skills and capabilities of Filipinos in software engineering and product development.

“This year marks my 25th year since graduating from computer science in U.P. Diliman so I thought this is an opportune time to try to give more back to both the academe and the industry that has nurtured me all these years,” said COO dela Cruz.

“With my current experience working for a U.S. venture-backed company and involvement with investors like Dado Banatao and his colleagues at PhilDev foundation, I hope to serve as a conduit for the PSIA and our colleagues in Philippine academe to PhilDev and other Silicon Valley professionals in their network. Hopefully, we can get more PSIA companies involved in the R&D efforts being planned and increase our global impact,” dela Cruz added.

Last year, MR was recognized as the 2013 Professional Degree Awardee for Computer Science by the University of the Philippines Alumni Engineers (UPAE). Each year, the UPAE selects alumni from the UP College of Engineering who have distinguished themselves in their respective professions. The formal awarding ceremony was held during the UP College of Engineering Alumni homecoming last November 9, 2013.

MR is a magna cum laude graduate of Computer Science at the University of the Philippines. She has a Master’s Degree in Computing from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. She has managed and delivered complex global I.T. projects in industries such as financial securities, insurance, banking, telecommunications, and transportation. She spent 14 years working at Headstrong in various roles such as project manager, technical architect, and head of delivery for the Manila Global Delivery Center. At Stratpoint, she is in charge of the company’s operations.

About PSIA

The Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA) is a nonprofit organization that aims to promote and make the Philippines competitive in the global software market. It is the recognized association of Filipino software innovators and a network of small to medium-sized software companies. PSIA represents the biggest alliance of software development enterprises in the Philippines.

About UPAE

UPAE is an organization that aims to involve alumni engineers and encourage the members to actively participate and contribute to the advancement of the organization. Recipients of the Professional Degree Awards category were nominated based on the general criteria and requirements set by UPAE. Each nominee must have attained national and international recognition in his/her respective field of profession or career.

About Stratpoint

Stratpoint Technologies, Inc. (http://www.stratpoint.com) is an IT and software engineering firm based in the Philippines, with 15 years of experience partnering with companies on their web and mobile application development. The company specializes in web and mobile app development, UX design, and machine-to-machine (M2M) technology solutions. It has specially developed unique expertise as a startup accelerator, working closely with tech startups in the U.S. and other countries, by providing a dedicated development team based in Manila.

Stratpoint is a registered PEZA (Philippine Export Processing Zone Authority) corporation fully owned by Narra Venture Capital (http://www.narravc.com) and supported by Tallwood VC (http://www.tallwoodvc.com).

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/stratpoint-coo-elected-psia-board-010000118.html

Careers

BGN Ventures, Inc. (an affiliate of Narra Venture Capital) is an exciting and innovative venture capital and high-technology consulting firm that assists entrepreneurs in the Information Technology industry. We work with leaders in the Information Technology world of the Philippines and Silicon Valley, California.

Narra-BGN is located in Alabang’s Northgate Cyberzone, a PEZA zone of innovation surrounded by call centers, high-tech companies, young vibrant people, clean air and an energetic work-environment. We offer competitive compensation and benefits with added bonus to successful, long-term employees.

Send resumes, college transcripts, and references to HR@narravc.com or fax to +63(2) 552-1177 for attention to the HR Manager.

If you are interested or simply want to be considered in the future when Narra-BGN and its partners are hiring when we start new companies or are in search of new talent, please sign-up and accomplish your profile at the Brain Gain Network website.

Brain Gain Network (BGN)

 

Initially founded to be a network for technology entrepreneurs intended to address and increase the level of high, value-added technology business in the Philippines, it has grown to accommodate and open itself to other professions such as those in government service, development work, food and agriculture, banking and consumer-manufacturing to name a few. It maintains an extensive database of a global network of Filipinos (and non-Filipinos alike) dedicated to Philippine development and progress.

BGN offers its members opportunities to:

  1. Market yourself by promoting your portfolio – talents, skills, expertise, patents and ideas.
  2. Expand your professional networks here and abroad.
  3. Build opportunities for Filipinos by venturing into projects for social and livelihood needs.
  4. Seek and gain access to a pool of industry experts.
  5. Contribute in the Philippines’ development such as public-private sector partnerships to formulate better public policies regarding trade and investments, boosting research and development, among others.

Select information and access to site applications will be made available free to all registered members while premium services will be created for corporate users such that they conduct their operations more efficiently.

We aim to make the Brain Gain Network the resource portal that will bring all Filipinos to work altogether towards a better and globally competitive Philippines.

Contact Us

Narra VC is located in the booming Alabang,
Muntinlupa City at the outskirts of Metro Manila.

Address

Unit 2202, 22nd floor
Asian Star Building
Filinvest Corporate City
Alabang, Muntinlupa 1781
Metro Manila, Philippines

Telephone

PHIL +63 (2) 552-1175
US +1 (650) 331-1134

Fax

+63 (2) 552-1177

Inquiries

If you have any inquiries , send email to: