Pingar set to go global with search engine

Chris de Boer. Photo / Supplied

Tauranga software developer Pingar has appointed an experienced venture capitalist as its chairman before the public debut of its next-generation internet search engine.

Auckland-based Chris de Boer will bring "strong funding knowledge, governance, and Hong Kong and Chinese contacts" to the Pingar board, established by co-founder and managing director Peter Wren-Hilton.

De Boer, a director of Mobilis Networks and chairman of fellow global software developer Sonar6, has experience in investment, regulation, private equity, sharebroking and business consulting in London, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

He was an adviser to Cable and Wireless in Asia/Pacific, director of Optus Communications, chairman of the Hong Kong Takeovers Panel and an investment committee member of GEMS Oriental & General Fund.

He is also a consultant to New Zealand Investment Fund, a director of Macquarie Media Group and chairman of AngelLink, launched last month to back New Zealand high-growth technology ventures.

"Chris is keen to work with us and we are delighted to have him on board at such an exciting stage of development," said Wren-Hilton.

After years developing the Pingar search engine, Wren-Hilton's international dream is about to be realised. He will be demonstrating it for the first time in public at the Microsoft SharePoint conference in Las Vegas in four weeks. The process and results will be displayed at the conference to be attended by 5500 delegates at the Mandalay Bay Hotel - the scene of many heavyweight boxing world title fights.

Pingar, established in 2006, is making sure it will not be missed. During its global launch, Pingar will be announcing some major overseas customers and arrangements with Microsoft sales partners to resell the search engine to companies in different countries.

Pingar has been tipped to change the way online users search for information, saving them time and money.

Normally, they would type in keywords and search a variety of online documents for the information they require.

The Pingar technology understands the context of the inquiry or question and automatically searches the documents, extracting the relevant content in a pdf file in seconds.

- BAY OF PLENTY TIMES