Computer scents pioneer gets a shot in the arm

By Eric Auchard

NEW YORK: DigiScents Inc., the much-ballyhooed US start-up seeking to give computers a sense of smell, was set on Monday to disclose that it has won the backing of two leaders in the global fragrance industry. The Oakland, California-based DigiScents said Givaudan of Switzerland and Quest of the Netherlands have taken minority equity stakes in return for being named "preferred fragrance suppliers" of the pioneering technology company.

"This deal is the largest joint investment by the fragrance industry in a new technology," Joel Bellenson, chief executive and co-founder of DigiScents, said in an interview on Sunday. "The fragrance makers are a key part of our supply chain," Bellenson said. "Their backing lays the groundwork for much deeper collaboration." Terms of the deals were not disclosed.

The chief executive of closely held DigiScents said the company had received a total of $20 million in backing to date, including $10 million in February from Hong Kong-based Internet investor Pacific Century CyberWorks. By the second half of next year, major players in the advertising, packaged goods and video game industries will begin using DigiScents' digital smell-sensing technology to recreate thousands of odors via a personal computer-based smell-amplifying device.

Fragrance backers key to consumer launch

Bellenson said the initial deal covered only the development of the company's scent emission system. Givaudan and Quest will supply the raw materials that DigiScents will use to create scent cartridges used to create odors. The devices work like color printer cartridges, but instead of ink to paper they pump a palette of scents into the air. Just as a few primary colors can be used to create thousands of shades essential oils can be blended to create widely recognizable scents, scientific researches have shown.

The system will be available to consumers in the middle of 2001. DigiScents' iSmell consumer device, which looks like a small stereo speaker, connects to a PC and can blend 128 basic scents into a much larger number of smells. DigiScents has created a database that compares computer smell recordings to thousands of human tested smells. This human-machine interface opens the possibility of communicating a wide range of smells over electronic networks.

A new industry: "Aroma genomics"

Future collaboration could include applying the deep-scent expertise of the two fragrance houses to DigiScents scent-recognition software, forming a crucial piece of any computer smell detection and emission system, he said.

DigiScents has taken the lead in bringing together recent advances in genetic research and computing technology for what Bellenson calls, partly in jest, "'aroma genomics,' the biological and psychological exploration of 'odor space.'" "We are bringing together unrivaled capabilities in sensory science, fragrance technologies, and artistic know-how," Bellenson said of the pact with two leaders in the $50 billion worldwide food, beverage and fragrance industry.

Quest is the food and fragrances unit of British chemical groups Imperial Chemical Industries Plc. Givaudan was spun off from Swiss drug and chemical giant Roche Holding Ltd. in June. "(Givaudan's) international creative base of world-renowned perfumers will enable this alliance to find superior solutions for revolutionary applications of fragrances," J. Witmer, chief executive of Givaudan, said in a statement.

To date, DigiScents has released product-developer kits to Web site designers, packaged goods marketing companies and more than 3,700 individual computer video-game developers.

(C) Reuters Limited 2000.