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Teladoc Health

Teladoc Health – An Online Healthcare Company Providing On-Demand Medical Supervision Since 2002

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Established in 2002, Teladoc Health is a US-based company providing remote healthcare, medical supervision, telehealth devices, etc. The company has a very broad customer base as it serves more than 130 countries. A virtual healthcare platform like Teladoc Health comes very handy during times of emergency situations. The founders of Teladoc Health are Bryon Brooks and Michael Gorton. Currently, the company has more than 2,000 employees providing healthcare services to around 27 million people around the world.

The idea of Teladoc Health is very unique and it is the first and the largest virtual healthcare company in the US. With time, Teladoc has expanded and rolled out a variety of new products including AI and analytics. The primary way of providing medical supervision to its users is done via telephone, video conferencing app, and also using mobile apps. The importance of online healthcare service will always be on-demand but in situations like a global pandemic, its usability is increased by several folds.

Establishment of Teladoc Healthcare

Bryon and Michael founded the company, Teladoc Health in Dallas, Texas in 2002. The idea of developing an online platform for medical consultancy was first brought to the US by these two people. When the company was founded, the business model was such that it allowed patients to consult state-licensed doctors through the Teladoc platform. While the patients or the users needed to pay a sum of $35 or $40 for every consultation, the company paid a monthly amount for their employees so that they can also have access to the services of Teladoc Health.

Teladoc Health
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With this business model, Teladoc decided to move forward and launched the company nationally in 2005 during the Consumer Directed Healthcare Conference in Chicago. At this time, Michael Gorton was both the Chairman and CEO of the company. After it was launched nationally, many big companies started providing Teladoc services to their employees as a part of their healthcare benefits. By the end of 2007, Teladoc hit 1 million users.

Growth and Expansion

Soon Michael Gorton was replaced by Jason Gorevic and the funding rounds of the company began. In December 2009, Teladoc conducted its initial private funding rounds and raised $9 million. After a couple of years, it raised another $22.6 million. In 2011, Teladoc and Aetna embarked on a joint venture as Aetna started offering Teladoc exclusively to its insured members from Florida and Texas. In 2013, Teladoc acquired a company called Consult a Doctor for $16.6 million to bring more versatility to its platform and give small companies access to the service of Teladoc. By the end of 2013, Teladoc’s total funding money summed up to $46.6 million.

After the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, many companies signed with Teladoc. The company witnessed a great increase in the number of users during 2013 and 2014. Many famous companies like Blue Shield, Oscar, Home Depot, T-Mobile, etc signed in with Teladoc. In 2014, Teldoc acquired AmeriDoc which was one of the biggest competitors of the company during that time. Another private funding round was conducted in 2014 where the company raised $50 million.

The company again made two big acquisitions in 2015, namely Better Help and Stat Health Services. Teladoc became a public company on 1st July 2015 and it was the only telemedicine company in the NYSE. Teladoc acquired the highest number of companies in 2015 and 2016 which includes Compile Inc, HealthiestYou, etc. Teladoc also started to expand its expertise in new fields such as dermatology, sexual health, and behavioral health.

Current Day Teladoc

In 2017, Teladoc made the biggest acquisition in its history as it bought a medical consultation firm called Best Doctors. In 2018, the company changed its name from Teladoc Inc to Teladoc Health. For the next couple of years, Teladoc also focused on acquiring international companies to strengthen its market in other nations. Last year, Teladoc made another big acquisition as it purchased Livongo Health for $18.5 billion.

Teladoc has always intended to stay clear of any major competitors by eventually acquiring them and thus it today has a huge number of services for every kind of patient. In Teladoc Health, there’s a huge diversity in types of medical consultation and virtual care.  The company is currently thriving in the healthcare sector under the leadership of Jason Gorevic. He continues to be the CEO of the company since 2009.

Xilinx Inc

Xilinx Inc – The Company Behind Programmable Semiconductor Chips.

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Based in San Jose, California, Xilinx, Inc. is one of the leading programmable logic device manufacturers in America. The company is over 37 years old and has a glorious history of success. Xilinx is the inventor of the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and is known for manufacturing the first fabless manufacturing model. The company is operating globally, and around 5000 people are working for the company. As of 2020, the annual revenue made by Xilinx is around US$ 3.16 billion.

The Founding Story of Xilinx Inc

Ross Freeman, Bernard Vonderschmitt, and James V Barnett II, work-fellows from Zilog (a microprocessor manufacturing company), founded Xilinx in 1984 in San Jose. The main idea behind starting the company was to develop reprogrammable chips that could be used like blank tapes. The founders could not convince Zilog to invest in FPGA, but they were able to raise $4.5 million in venture capital and design the company’s first FPGA in 1984, which they started to sell in 1985. The idea was successful. As a result, Xilinx made around $14 million in revenue in 1987.

Xilinx Inc
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The Growth and Expansion

The company profits were rising year by year, and in 1989, Xilinx went public on the NASDAQ. The success also led to a new 144,000-square-foot manufacturing unit in the same area, and Xilinx had bagged contracts from companies like HP, Apple Inc., IBM, and Sun Microsystems. In 1990, the company sales crossed $100 million, and Xilinx was dominating the FPGA market. During the same time, it also expanded its operations and started to experiment with EPLDs (EPROM technology-based Complex Programmable Logic Devices). By the mid-90s, the company was also operating in Europe and Asia.

In 1994, the company launched one of the most successful series of FPGA chips and, the XC5000. These chips were a cost-effective alternative to high-volume non-field-programmable gate array products. XC3100L and XC4000L were some of the most loved chips under the same chip family. Xilinx also started to manufacture low-power devices like portable computers, peripheral devices, wireless communication gear, and digital cameras, etc. Only after ten years of Xilinx’s inception, in 1995, its annual revenue reached $550 million, and around 1000 workers were employed at different office locations of Xilinx in three continents.

Xilinx appeared in the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2001 for the first time at no. 14, and later, it ranked 6the (2002) and 4the (2003) in the same list. The next innovative product from the company was in 2011, the Virtex-7 2000T. It is the first product that used the 2.5 stacked silicon to offer a bigger FPGA. At the same time, Xilinx combined the  FPGA with transceivers to enhance the bandwidth with low power consumption. The company started from making programmable chips and was successful to achieve its aim of making “all things programmable”, when it introduced the 28nm SoC devices, combining an ARM core with an FPGA and new tools software under the Zynq-7000 family.

The next year, the company launched an advanced electronic design system named  Vivado Design Suite, and in 2014, Xilinx released the first 20 nm UltraScale. In 2017, Xilinx partnered with Amazon and developed new software development tools. Xilinx is also actively working in the field of machine learning and has acquired a Chinese machine learning startup named DeepPhi Technology in July 2018. In November of the same year, the Zynq UltraScale+ family microprocessor got their  Safety Integrity Level (SIL) certification, which certified that these microprocessors are safe to use in  AI-based safety- applications of up to SIL 3, in industrial 4.0 platforms of automotive, aerospace, and AI systems. Xilinx acquired Solarflare Communications, Inc in 2019 and launched a single-chip FPGA-based 100G NIC jointly with the newly acquired company. The company made revenues worth $3 billion in 2019.

The CEO at Xilinx

Victor Peng is the current CEO of Xilinx Inc. He was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1960 and holds American citizenship. Peng has got a B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.E. degree in the same subject from Cornell University.

Peng started his career at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1982, and in 1996, he joined Silicon Graphics, switching to few more jobs in  MIPS Technologies, Tzero Technologies, ATI, and later AMD in the following years. In 2008, Peng joined Xilinx and was appointed as the  Senior Vice President of the programmable platforms group in 2013. He also served the company as the senior vice president (2014) and the CFO (2017). On January 29, 2018, Peng became the CEO of Xilinx.

Square Inc

Square Inc – An American Company providing Digital Payment Services since 2009.

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Square Inc is a company booming in the realm of financial technology and services. The company was founded by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey in 2009. Started off as a company to help small retailers and vendors accept credit cards but slowly ITV started expanding and broadened its customer base to big enterprises as well. The company’s headquarters is based in San Francisco, California and it is one of the largest companies in the financial technology sectors across the globe. So, let’s have a look at where it all began.

The Founding Story of Square Inc

Before co-founding Square Inc with Jim McKelvey, Jack Dorsey served as the CEO of Twitter. He stepped down from the position to establish Square Inc. The main idea behind founding this company was to make credit cards with tech that will be able to transmit data through the headphone jack of a smartphone.

To get the company up and running, both of them needed funding from investors. Since the co-founders hailed from a highly rich professional background, they were able to raise a total of $10 million in Series A funding. Some of the investors include Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter) and Marissa Mayer (former CEO of Yahoo!). After receiving this funding, Square Inc developed its first product which was a square-shaped credit card reader. So, after a year of establishment, Square Inc rolled out its first product and also launched an app for both iOS and Android.

Square Inc
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The company eventually started booming as it witnessed transactions worth millions of dollars every week. So, the co-founders decided to conduct another round of funding in January 2011. The money raised in this round was $27.5 million and the net valuation of the company became $230 million. During this time, Visa bought a small stake in the company.

Growth of Square Inc

In the early months of 2011, the company processed around $3 million per day. Seeing the number of users increasing per day, Square Inc made a deal with Apple so that the devices of the company are sold at Apple Stores. This increased the visibility of the brand and attracted more investors. After the next funding round, the valuation of the company became $1 billion. So, a young brand became a billion-dollar company within a span of three years and that was just the early days.

Since Square focused mainly on retailers, businesses, and small vendors, it built a lot of apps over the years to enhance digital payment processing, creating online stores, etc. One of the best services provided by Square Inc is Square Capital which analyzes data from merchant’s sales and provides advance loans using Square’s credit card processor. With the services provided by Square Inc, more businesses were able to create an online presence. In 2012, the company hosted Series D funding and raised $200 million and after two years it conducted Series E making a total worth of Square Inc $6 billion.

Uncertain Times

The company was making good money but its partnership with Starbucks led to a huge monetary loss. The company also went through some turmoil in 2015 when it was planning to file an IPO. During this time, Jack Dorsey became the interim CEO of Twitter and he had to handle both companies at the same time. So, after Square Inc started trading as a public company, the share prices dropped at the beginning and for one year the journey was a bit rocky.

Though the company lost millions in the partnership with Starbucks and found it difficult to trade as a public company after a year it was all getting back on track. From 2017 the company started recovering from its failure and decided to go international by expanding its services in the UK market. Given that the shares of Square were falling in 2016, the shares grew to 150% in 2018. In time, the company has also made a few acquisitions like Weebly and most recently gained majority ownership in Tidal.

About the Founders

Jack Dorsey is mostly famous as he served as the CEO and co-founder of Twitter. He went to New York University but dropped out before graduating. He started working on the idea of Twitter while he was a student at NYU.

Square Inc
Image Source: images.mktw.net and grupobcc.com
Jim McKelvey and Jack Dorsey

Jim McKelvey is an American billionaire famous for co-founding Square Inc. He went to Washington University at St Louis and after graduating started working as a contractor for IBM.

Gemalto

Gemalto – A Renowned Digital Security Company recently purchased by the Thales Group.

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Gemalto is a famous electronic company providing services in the digital security sector. The main two products of the company are software applications and smart cards along with services related to them. Gemalto was formed in 2006 as a result of a merger between two companies, Axalto and Gemplus. In 2019, Gemalto came under the acquisition of the Thales Group and until then it was the biggest producer of SIM cards across the globe. Currently, the company’s headquarters are based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It operates in more than 45 countries and has plenty of production sites and R&D centers. So, let’s have a look at the parent companies and how they became a single big entity, Gemalto.

The Founding Story of Gemplus

Gemplus was founded in the late 1980s and it started trading in the prepaid phonecards field. In the 1990s words spread about the brand and hence Axalto tied up with Gemplus to create a strong presence in the market and grow its business. Before 1999, Gemplus conducted its business through a french limited partnership called Gemplus SCA but in 1999 it merged with Gemplus Associates and formed Gemplus SA, a joint stock company. The company filed for an IPO in December 2000 and after a few years, it restructured its corporate divisions. During this time, most of the subsidiaries of Gemplus SA were transferred to Gemplus International SA. In 2005, Gemplus acquired a Finland-based company for Setec Oy, and next year it merged with Axalto.

Schlumberger renamed as Axalto

Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals renamed the company in 2003 to Axalto to add more versatility to its brand. Schlumberger was a big hit in the chip technology market in 1979 and it developed its first telephone chip card in the 1980s. The company used to establish partnerships with several telecom operators in many nations and started developing a digital era of communication. In the 1990s the company designed its first SIM card which was used for the launch of GSM in Europe.

In the 21st century, the company has made breakthroughs by designing java-based microprocessor cards and smart cards. Long before Axalto merged with Gemplus, the former thrived in the electronics industry creating various products and applications for telecommunication, IT, healthcare, retail, and other sectors. Axalto was spun off as a different company from the parent company Schlumberger for the smart cards and POS terminal activities.

After The Merger

The merger between Axalto and Gemplus took place in 2006. During the next ten years, Gemalto acquired a series of companies in many countries. In Taiwan, it acquired Leigh Mardon’s personalization center, in South Africa, it acquired Multos International and NamITech, in Sweden, it acquired Todos AB, etc. In 2017, the Thales Group showed interest in acquiring Gemalto and as approved by the board of directors the acquisition was completed in 2019. The deal was closed for €4.8 billion. Gemalto today is famous for supplying software solutions, SIM, and managed services in the telecommunication market. The company has around 700 million subscribers spread internationally. Since it also partners with telecom operators, Gemalto has more than 400 telecom operator customers in the world.

Gemalto
Image Source: upload.wikimedia.org

Gemalto also delivers EMV cards to several financial institutions after it partnered with Garanti Bank in Turkey. This partnership was established in 2008 after which it rolled out 300,00 Gemalto EMV contactless bank cards. In 2016, the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia also partnered with Gemalto for the same. Gemalto has also rolled out biometrics cards in recent years. The company has significant contributions in the public sector as it provides e-passports, e-driving license, e-government IDs, etc.

The CEO: Philippe Vallee

Since 2016, Philippe Vallee has been serving as the CEO of Gemalto. Before becoming the CEO, he worked as Chief Operating Officer and also in the EVP Telecommunications Business Unit of Gemalto. Philippe Vallee also worked at Gemplus before he became a part of Gemalto. He has a very rich background in marketing, sales, and product management and served at many positions in these units in Asia and Europe.

Sony

Sony Group Corporation – The Journey from Tape Recorders to Self-driving Cars

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Sony Group Corporation is a well-known multinational technology company. From cameras to smartphones and from manufacturing laptops to making entertainment content, the company is a conglomerate. Sony was founded exactly 75 years ago in 1946 in Nihonbashi, Japan, and today it operates from its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The company is known for its quality product and has its branches all over the world. Sony trades as a public company and is counted among one of the world’s largest manufacturers of consumer and professional electronic products.

The Founding of Sony

As soon the world war 2 was over, in May 1946, Akio Morita and  Masaru Ibuka started an electronics company named Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (trading name TTK). The company launched Japan’s first tape recorder in 1958, the Type-G. After multiple name changes of the company, the founders renamed the company Sony in the same year.

Sony
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The company specialized in making tape recorders and hit the U.S. market with its new launch, TR-63 radio, during the mid-50s. The portable transistor radios from Sony were in high demand, and in a span of ten years, starting from 1955, the company sold 100,000 units to American residents. In 1960, the company established the American branch of Sony Corporation. Sony had also become a great support for the Japanese economy, as the company was offering jobs to middle-aged Japanese people. The quality of the Sony products also brought faith among the American consumers for Japanese products.

The Years of Growth and Expansion

Other than making electronic products, Sony was also excelling in the other fields. In 1979, the company started an insurance company. Due to the recession in the 70s and 80s, it also started to manufacture Compact Disc to support the business. In the 90s, the company entered the gaming business and launched the most famous PlayStation. For further expansion, Sony also acquired CBS Records in 1988 and Columbia Pictures in 1989 and started its career in the entertainment and media business.

In 1997, the company in a partnership with Phillips and Toshiba launched  DVD, and it was also among the first ones to develop the Blu-ray optical disc format, which became popular in 2006 and onwards. In 2000 Sony also started to manufacture mobile phones, and in the next year, it partnered with Ericsson, establishing Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications. The partnership between the two brought a few of the first camera phones, which became really popular among people around the world. In 2012, Sony bought all the shares in Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and launched new series of smartphones under the name Xperia.

Sony
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On the other hand, the company continuously focused on its gaming business and launched the portable PlayStation console, the PlayStation Portable, in 2004.  The same year, it also established Sony BMG, an entertainment wing in partnership with Bertelsmann AG. In 2010, the company introduced the first mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras, and its global sales reached US$7.2 billion. In November 2011, Sony ranked 9th (jointly with Panasonic) in Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics.

Sony launched the first 4K OLED television in 2012 and became the third-largest maker of televisions in the world. In 2013, it had become one of the leaders in the smartphone industry. Sony sold its Vaio PC division in 2014. By 2015, Sony was also exploring possibilities in manufacturing self-driving cars and invested $842 thousand in ZMP INC.

In 2015, the company acquired the image sensor business of Toshiba, and the next year, it released the first PlayStation VR. The company introduced the OLED televisions under the brand name Bravia in 2017 and sold 13.5 million phones as well as 73.6 million units of  PlayStation 4, the same year. The company became the largest manufacturer of CMOS image sensors in 2020.

Products and Services

Sony is a conglomerate and works in multiple divisions, including game & network services, music, pictures, electronics products & solutions, imaging & sensing solutions, financial services, etc. Sony started by manufacturing tape recorders, but today it is known for its other high-quality products like 4K TV, high-quality Cameras, PlayStation, smartphone, computing devices, robotics products, etc. The company has its separate wing for entertainment and media business and is also into healthcare and biotechnology.

The CEO: Masaru Ibuka

Masaru Ibuka is one of the founders of Sony. He was born on 11 April 1908 in Nikkō City, Japan. He completed his high school education from Hyogo Prefectural Kobe High School and graduated from Waseda University. His first job after graduating was at  Photo-Chemical Laboratory, a movie film company. But later, he had to join the navy during World War II. After the war ended, he started a  radio repair shop in  Nihonbashi, Tokyo in 1945.

Akio Morita, on the other hand, was born on 26 January 1921 in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan. He graduated in Physics from the Osaka Imperial University in 1944. He joined the Imperial Japanese Navy as a sub-lieutenant during world war II, where he met Ibuka. Morita saw a newspaper article about Ibuka’s radio shop and contacted him to join the business. Both then founded Sony in 1946 as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo.

Keyence

Keyence Corporations – The Japanese Electronics and Semiconductor Leader

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Keyence is a Japanese multinational electronics company with its headquarters located in Osaka, Japan. The company is one of the largest manufacturers of electronic equipment like sensors, touch panels, 3D printers, microscopes, bar code readers, recorders, packaged software, etc.  It is a fabrication-less company such that it plans and designs the products, but the manufacturing is done by the other companies under a contract from Keyence. The company is operational in industries including automotive, IT, logistics, manufacturing, and software. Keyence is a publically traded company, and over 8000 people are working for it in its global offices.

Founding of Keyence

Takemitsu Takizaki founded Keyence in March 1972 as Lead Electric. The company got worldwide recognition as a leader in the field of industrial automation and inspection equipment manufacturing in 1974. In 1975, the company brought a new product, ‘high accuracy proximity sensor’, and the high demand for the product brought lots of success and growth to the company. In the next ten years, the company was known as the world leader in the electronic industry.

Keyence
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In 1983, the company introduced the optical fiber photoelectric sensor, and the next year, it established its first international office in the United States. Keyence developed the first photoelectric sensor to utilize a laser diode as the light source in 1986, and the same year, the name of the company was changed to Keyence Corporation. The company introduced a compact barcode reader under its name in 1989, and in 1990, it came with a microscope having a built-in monitor. In the next decade, the company developed the world’s smallest machine vision system, the world’s first autofocus color laser microscope, and a high speed and high accuracy machine vision system.

The years starting from 2000 were the years of innovation for the company. It was developing new products every year, and the world’s first 3-Axis laser marker (2006) as well as the world’s first CMOS laser sensor (2007), was one of them. Keyence also introduced the world’s first microscope with high-speed magnified video capture capabilities in 2008 and the fastest laser triangulation sensor in the industry in 2009. world’s smallest micro-head (2011), the world’s fastest 2D/3D laser displacement sensor (2012), and the world’s first macroscope with one-shot 3D measurement (2013) are also credited under the name of Keyence.

The Products

From photoelectric sensor and proximity sensors to barcode reader, laser markers, and digital microscopes, a large client base of Keyence rely on the company for these products. Keyence specializes in manufacturing products under categories like automation sensors, industrial safety, industrial laser markers, machine vision systems and vision sensors, industrial inkjet printer, measurement systems and sensors, advanced microscope, static eliminators, and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC).

Keyence Today

Keyence has been in the electronic industry for almost 50 years, and since the inception of the company, the world has witnessed the per year steady growth of the company. The company is one of the leaders in the development and manufacturing of automation equipment worldwide. Other than the electronic and semiconductor industry, the company includes clients from the automotive, food and packaging, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical industries. 

As of 2018, the company made revenues worth US$4.958 billion, and 6000 people were working for it in its global offices. It has appeared in the “Top Ten Most Excellent Companies in Japan” list by Nihon Keizai Shimbun multiple times. It has also been named as one of the best companies for employees in terms of salaries, the average annual salary for full-time employees, etc. Keyence operates through its network of  16 international organizations.

The Founder: Takemitsu Takizaki

Takemitsu Takizaki founded Keyence Corporation in 1972. He is a well-known Japanese businessman and currently serving as the honorary chairman of Keyence. Takizaki was born on 10 June 1945 in Japan. He completed his high school education at Amagasaki Industry High School. Apart from his interest in electronics and semiconductors, he is also a keen fossil collector.

After founding the Keyence, he held multiple posts at the company. He served the company as the chairman, president, and representative director. Presently, he is one of the members of the board at Keyence. AS of 2020, the net worth of Takizaki is $24 billion.