LI start-up innRoad to use $5.8M venture-capital funds on development

A young Southampton company obtained $5.8 million in venture-capital funding in the second quarter, a sum that was more than double the total investment Long Island companies received in the same period a year earlier, a new report said Thursday.

The company, innRoad, which makes software to help hotels manage their bookings, reservations and payments online, was the only local business to receive such financing in the second quarter, said the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. The financing was the company's second consecutive quarterly award. Launched by Murat Ozsu in 2008, innRoad received $550,000 in the first quarter.

The company has said it plans to use the money to continue developing and marketing its software, used by more than 350 independent hotels in the United States. The $5.8 million in financing was from Blue Heron Capital of Richmond, Va., and Rose Park Advisors of Boston.

Though Long Island has received venture-capital funding every quarter in the last year, it needs to work harder to win over investors, said David Silverman, a managing partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“While Long Island has demonstrated some level of consistency over the past year in its ability to attract at least one deal in each quarter, the region needs to continue to promote itself as a place where VCs should invest,” he said.

In the year-ago second quarter, a Massapequa biotech company, KellBenx Inc., obtained $2.5 million, the only Long Island company that received financing in that period.

New York metro area companies received $567 million in funding in the second quarter this year, down 9 percent from $624 million a year earlier. But the number of deals rose to 100, from 98. Nationally, venture capitalists invested $7 billion, down 7 percent from $7.5 billion last year.