Today, NCR has announced the acquisition of Mobiqa, an Edinburgh based startup specialised in mobile ticketing. Founded in 2002 by Ronnie Forbes, they pioneered bar code delivery through mobile phones. CEO Nick Rankin refocused the sales effort on airlines, where they quickly became market leader. They also cater to rail operators, the entertainment industry (think TicketMaster), and to retailers. If you ever received a bar code on your phone, it’s likely it came from a noisy server locked in a cupboard in Edinburgh.
One of their strengths is they are able to send bar codes to a large range of mobile phones, old and recent, locally and abroad. Standard barcodes are delivered to mobile phones via SMS, MMS, WAP and email. The user no longer needs to carry a boarding pass or a coupon. It’s more efficient, it’s faster, there’s less waste and it ends up being cheaper to manage.
Mobiqa received support from Scottish Enterprise and private investors. It proves yet again there is a healthy private investors community in Scotland that is able to drive growth. Unfortunately, the terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but one can be sure the final figure is good enough to make shareholders smile.
While on the topic mobile ticketing, our friends from m8 Capital invested $2 million in Masabi in September. Masabi focuses on delivering bar code tickets to mobiles for rail operators. The company was a Young Bull winner for the inaugural 2010 Bully Award honouring the leading European technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) companies. m8 Capital is a London based venture capital fund specialised in mobile technologies.
StartupCafe 
Fantastic news, I learnt about this from David Richardson this afternoon.
Might be a great example for the “Angels & Exits” day that Informatics Ventures has lined up for May 2011. Already got Google and IBM lined up. NCR would be a great addition!
Andrew
what was the price Thomas? and what was the total invested capital? the IRR to equity investors overall?
The details of the deal were not made public, but we know the Scottish Co-Investment fund invested £500,000 in Mobiqa in 2006 and later gave it a £200,000 loan. According to Scottish Enterprise’s annual report its 23.9 per cent stake was worth £1.54m on March 31, 2010 (ref: Business7).
[…] Local startup Freeagent wins the Scottish Software Satisfaction awards, we start telling you about Launch48, and then we explain it more, talk about how Mobiqa is acquired by NCR. […]
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