PRINCETON, N.J., 4 August 2006. Battelle Ventures L.P. and its affiliate, Innovation Valley Partners, have invested in Rajant Corporation's $3.25-million Series B financing round. Rajant is a developer of nonfixed-wireless-LAN products designed to provide an instant lifeline to the world in areas where fixed networks are destroyed, temporarily out of service, or simply impractical.
This is the first institutional round of funding for the company, based in Malvern, Penn.
"Rajant has engineered a line of portable battery-powered units called BreadCrumbs that can create secure wireless mobile networks at the flip of a switch," explains Rajant CEO Robert Schena. "The moveable units are the access points, so the network is not at all wired or fixed."
The BreadCrumb idea grew out of the events of 9-11, says Rajant CEO Schena, when communication infrastructure was destroyed or simply failed. At the time, he says, "Rajant was developing larger products for a truck-mounted network, but changed its focus in response to U.S. military requests for a quickly deployable, wireless, mobile network with small but powerful nodes that could be dropped along a path or within a specified area 'like breadcrumbs.'"
Schena points out that instant Rajant BreadCrumb networks were deployed post-tsunami, in Phuket, Thailand, to establish a wireless network in one of the major relief centers, and post-Katrina, in New Orleans, where wireless connectivity was brought to Touro Hospital. He says units are now in use by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan and have been purchased by the Australian military; the cities of Toronto, Canada, and Anaheim, Calif.; the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency; the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority; the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey; the Honolulu Sheriff's Office; and the Polk County, Florida, Sheriff's Office.
