Two Israeli companies have chosen Atlanta for their headquarters.
Truvle, a software company that focuses on the travel industry, has moved here from Tel Aviv.
Precyse Technologies, a supply chain technology company, is moving its headquarters to Atlanta from Old Greenwich, Conn., and has secured $11 million from a Georgia-based private investor group, the company announced Tuesday. The company’s new CEO and board chairman both served in similar positions at Atlanta-based DataPath Inc., which builds satellite and wireless communications networks and was recently sold to Rockwell Collins Inc.
Truvle was founded in 2007 by Alon Zaibert, sparked by a conversation with a neighbor in Tel Aviv. The neighbor had recently paid $10,000 for first-class airline tickets and all he got in response was a black and white e-mail confirmation.
“Back in the day, you used to get a packet, with paper tickets, coupons, reading material and now all you get is an e-mail and most of it is code that you can’t even read,” Mr. Zaibert told GlobalAtlanta in a telephone interview. “It didn’t make sense.”
Mr. Zaibert developed a model for a graphically enhanced e-ticket that would include pictures of the cities you are visiting, notices of concerts and other events happening while you are there and specials for restaurants and other attractions. With every ticket, the purchaser also gets a personal web page that details the itinerary and provides additional information about the destination such as weather, maps and currency exchange rates.
Three months after he came up with the idea, Mr. Zaibert presented it to a conference of travel agents in Germany.
“They stormed me after the presentation, saying ‘When can you install this?'” he said.
Truvle charges travel agencies a small fee for each e-ticket. It also splits with the agencies the commissions from sales made from advertisements on the personal web pages.
Truvle’s clients include FCm Travel Solutions, a global travel management company, SkyLink, a Canadian-based airline ticket consolidator and the American Automobile Association. It hopes to soon land major airlines as clients.
Mr. Zaibert chose to move the headquarters to Atlanta in part because it is a travel industry hub, with the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, and the world’s largest airline, Delta Air Lines Inc., located here.
The city is an affordable place to do business and Delta has direct flights from Atlanta to Tel Aviv, Mr. Zaibert added.
“Also, Atlanta is physically located on the East Coast, which means for us communicating with Europe and Tel Aviv is much easier than it would be if we were on the West Coast,” said Mr. Zaibert. “Weather wise, it’s very similar to Tel Aviv.”
Initially, the privately-held company will have only a small office near Cumberland Mall in Cobb County. Mr. Zaibert has leased a home in east Cobb County and will live here with his family. The company also has offices in Miami, Israel, Europe and Asia.
In its news release, Precyse called Atlanta “an easy choice” for its headquarters because of cost and “the availability of some of the country’s best engineering talent.” Precyse makes wireless devices that allow companies to track the location of their products during shipment, improving the efficiency of the supply chain. The company maintains a research and development center in Rosh Ha’ayin, Israel.
Andy Mullins, former CEO of DataPath, is the new head of Precyse. Former DataPath board chairman Russ Chandler now chairs the Precyse board of directors.
There will now be 46 Israeli companies operating in Atlanta, said Tom Glaser, president of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce in Atlanta.