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"Kompany\u00A0will be making its data available in English to UK-based companies, the international company information service announced today. In addition, it\u00A0is also launching a local website in Germany to provide in-depth reports on German companies.\r\n\r\nFor those that aren't clued up about kompany, it's an online service which provides access to corporate background details &amp;quot;including company profiles, credit-worthiness, legal status and other shareholder data.&amp;quot;\u00A0It currently includes information on over 21 million companies from more than 20 countries.\r\n\r\nUK businesses can now research and verify potential customers or business partners overseas, simply by typing in the company name on kompany.co.uk:\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAccording to its co-CEO, Bernhard Hoetzl, big data plays an important role in kompany's activities:\r\n&amp;quot;There is a huge amount of information on businesses available online and hidden in databases, but the situation is different in every country. So far, it has been difficult to gather and structure this data and to make it available to everybody \u2013 our service aims to close this gap.&amp;quot;\r\nToday's roll-out could be an important bridging gap for companies that either trade or are thinking about trading with their overseas counter-parts.\u00A0As a matter of fact, trading globally means you can never be too careful whether an overseas company is financially and legally safe to do business with. In this context, using kompany can be\u00A0a useful way to check the legitimacy\u00A0of a potential partner.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\nThe site itself is rather simple to use and isn't too overwhelming or cluttered with financial data and technical jargon. In other words, it is keeping the SME market in mind - an audience that might have have been sidelined from this type of information by cost, language or\u00A0accessibility.\r\n\r\nUsing the service to look up information on\u00A0a company is free, but obtaining government content from sources\u00A0such\u00A0as the UK\u2019s Companies House will come at a cost, which could vary depending on what type of information you require. It's important to note that company reports are instantly delivered in English\u00A0to UK users, regardless of which host country the data is accessed from.\r\n\r\nTo generate its reports, the service aggregates content from several sources, including official government information and private credit rating agencies \u2013 the first time this depth of information has been available on a cross-border basis, says kompany.\r\n\r\nSpeaking exclusively to TNW, co-CEOs\u00A0Russell E. Perry and Bernhard Hoetzl\u00A0explained that they are looking to expand the service from 20 countries to 30 by next year, and increase the number of\u00A0full localised offers from 3 to 10.\u00A0It's an important step for the Austrian-based outfit,\u00A0who was only founded in late February of this year and went through 2 rounds of funding for an amount over \u20AC1.1 million ($1.4m).\r\n\r\nKompany's current focus goes in two directions: product development and sustainable business model. Perry and\u00A0Hoetzl both\u00A0emphasise that they wanted to provide a service which gave current data at no cost. They say the idea was born out of self need; as entrepreneurs themselves, the team shared the same focal point of\u00A0grievance.\r\n\r\nKompany is now setting its sights on the bigger picture, and greater depths of data will be added over the coming months, including information on US businesses. In addition,\u00A0it also plans to grow globally and provide access to 100 million company listings by 2015.\r\n\r\nImage Credit: Flickr / \u00A0Jamiesrabbits"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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