Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

Oh look, IndraNet is reborn! (again, again)

Fuel prices are on the rise and have recently hit 18-month highs.

Electricity prices are also headed up, especially as we start the slide into winter.

Any time we start feeling the pinch in our wallets, scammers start working on nefarious ways to dupe unsuspecting victims into parting with what little cash they have left.

This has never been more true than in the energy sector, where there's never been a shortage of "free energy" generators, fuel-savers, devices that slash your power bill and other fakery.

I've already debunked these "run your car on water" systems in the past, but I still get emails from people who really don't believe that centuries of scientific study can be usurped by a jamjar and some baking soda.

Now I'm going to put NZ's own Indranet under the microscope again because, true to form, they've decided to, once again, go to the market and raise funds for what appears to be yet another hair-brained scheme.

Of course I have to tread carefully here, I want everyone to understand that what you're reading is my honest opinion and is not to be considered investment advice.

For those who are unfamiliar with IndraNet or who have forgotten what they've done in the past, here's a quick recap.

Way-back, they came out with plans to develop a mesh-network that sounded as if it had real promise.

Imagine an intelligent network that assembled itself out of a collection of nodes and went on to built its own intelligent routing for maximum efficiency.

That sounds reasonable and, if it worked "as advertised" might even be a commercial success.

So IndraNet was a mesh-networks company and posted obtuse non-details like this to its website in an attempt to raise funds.

Come on, you just know something's not right when you read a bullet point that says "Paradigm Shift - from Object-Subject Relations to non-Essentialist Communicative Actions". Can you say "buzzword overload"? This is obfuscation that would have Theressa Gattung green with envy.

Jump forwards a year or so and it becomes obvious that IndraNet did drum up some funds -- well at least enough to have their website redone. And what was one of the first things they did?

They went back to the public to raise more money

Remember that this was all done in those heady days of the dot-com boom, when networking technology (the backbone of the internet) was a darling child of investors. IndraNet was riding the dot-com wave in the investment markets.

Move forward a year or two and the dot-com bubble has burst. Where is IndraNet's long-touted intelligent mesh network?

Well it still seems to be the stuff of fairy tales

Move forward another year and the site is suddenly taken down for major "reconstruction" and it stays that way for almost an entire year. Surely not a good look for a company whose core (yet to be released) product is Net-related?

When the site returns, one of the first things you notice is that they're (once again) begging for funds from the public.

However, the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that they have added a few extra feathers to their cap in the form of:

• super computing
• reconfigurable computing
• advanced radio transmission
• cogeneration of electricity
• zero pollution networked transport means

About this time there's also this press release which would seem to indicate that the company is now doing well, deploying its long-awaited network technology in Australia. What happened to that?

A Google search turns up nothing. No sign of the company Mr Net Pty Ltd and no sign of IT-Queensland and IndraNet. Was that a successful venture? If not, why not? Did the network technology work? Or was this one of those press releases that get made during fund-raising to hike investors confidence?

It was also about this time that the energy sectors had become "the next big thing". Talk of "peak oil" and ever-increasing prices meant that energy investments were "hot".

Gosh... knock me down with a feather but what do IndraNet announce but this.

It seems that the writing was on the wall for their network technology so they had decided to jump-ships into the next "flavour of the month" market sector.

I might point out that it's now five years since IndraNet announced that it was going to be getting into the "zero emissions" vehicle market but we've yet to see anything as a result of this move on their part.

Jump forward another year or so and IndraNet seems to be putting all its efforts into the ridiculous Air Car. Now its website looks like this.

Now it's some three years later and you won't find any IndraNet air cars on our roads. You won't find Queensland (or anywhere else) filled with IndraNet networking gear and I've not heard of a single commercial installation of their co-generation technology.

But look at this.

It seems that, once again, IndraNet is chasing the hot-dollars by simply switching horses again mid-race.

This time they're chasing investment dollars for a "risky" solar energy system.

Well I'm sorry but if you're an investor who thinks "hmmm... might be worth a punt" then just stop and look at IndraNet's history...

Despite several rounds of fund raising (generating millions) and promises of everything from smart mesh networks to zero-emission vehicles and advanced co-generation systems they appear to have done nothing but fritter away investors money coming up with new schemes to make themselves attractive for the *next* round of fund-raising.

I'm not an investment analyst and don't even pretend to be one on the internet but if anyone was interested in my opinion of this company as a potential investment I would have to say "avoid".

If you are still tempted however, ask them to drop by in one of their zero-emission cars and let you surf the Net through their MeshNetwork while you drive out to visit one of their co-generation installations.

N'uff said?

A question for readers...

How on earth do companies like IndraNet get away with this kind of thing?

Why do people invest in companies that do nothing but dream up vapourware when there are so many far more deserving investments waiting to be funded which offer far greater chances of a return?

Please visit the sponsor!

Have your say on this...

PERMALINK to this column

Oh, and don't forget today's sci/tech news headlines

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font