October 21 (SeeNews) - Romanian IT group Gecad said on Friday it is transforming itself into an investment fund and is changing its name into Gecad Ventures.
"Gecad Ventures is a natural step in the journey we started as an investment fund. The sectors, in which we are interested to invest and the attention to early-stage projects remain unchanged, we just talk of a new positioning, for which an investment fund is more suitable," Gecad's founding partner Radu Georgescu said in a statement.
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Gecad Ventures will sustain companies with growth potential that have the capacity to innovate and to revolutionize their fields of activity. The investments will be focused on software, FinTech, security, technology, cloud, e-commerce and wearables areas, Georgescu added.
Gecad was established as a software company in 1992 and had its first big hit in 2003, when the RAV antivirus technology it had developed in 1994 was bought by Microsoft.
In 2004, Gecad launched e-commerce company Gecad ePayment, in which Naspers Group's MIH Allegro acquired a majority stake in 2010.
In 2005, Gecad created Avangate, an international provider of electronic software for software publishers which was bought in 2013 by American private equity firm Francisco Partners.
Over the last years, the group became a major investor in IT startups in Romania, including Vector Watch, Gluru, Sympho Pay, Smart Bill, PawSquad and Coinzone.
($=0.9121 euro)