At the IBM SmartCamp London on 18 November 2011 were Stephen Leonard, CEO, IBM UK & Ireland; Caroline Taylor, vice-president Marketing and Communications, IBM UK & Ireland; Dmitry Vysotski, CTO, Profitero; and Vol Pigrukh, CEO, Profitero
After winning the 2011 IBM SmartCamp London last November, Dublin competitor pricing intelligence firm Profitero is now preparing to compete in the 2012 IBM SmartCamp Global Final in Silicon Valley.
The IBM event, which runs 30 January-2 February in San Francisco, aims to connect innovative entrepreneurs with venture capitalists, academics and industry leaders so they can obtain mentoring and industry insight.
The ultimate winner at the global finals will glean the title: “IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year.”
Profitero to represent Ireland and the UK
Profitero is the only Irish company competing in the event, so it will represent Ireland and the UK in the competition. At IBM SmartCamp London in November, the company, which was only set up in 2010, was selected from more than 80 entries from the UK and Ireland. At the time, IBM said Profitero won due to its technology, its innovative business plan and its alignment with IBM’s Smarter Planet strategy.
Thirty-three year old Volodymyr Pigrukh, 30 year old Dmitry Vysotski and 29 year old Kanstantsin Chernysh are the founders of Profitero. The trio built up their expertise while working at Google, IBM and Microsoft in Dublin.
As well as having its headquarters in Dublin, Profitero has offices in Belarus. It has developed what it calls a “next-generation pricing intelligence service” for retailers to monitor their competitors’ prices, stock availability and shipping charges. Some of Profitero’s customers include Nielsen and Tesco. In November 2011, Profitero also raised €750,000 through the Bank of Ireland Start-up and Emerging Sectors Equity Fund and Enterprise Ireland.
The company’s founders say their solution simplifies and significantly speeds up the process of collecting and assessing this data.
Already, Profitero has a number of other accolades under its belt. It won the European SeedCamp 2010 competition and was a finalist at the 2010 Dublin Web Summit. Profitero also claimed the 2010 Irish Innovation Cubed award.
Other global finalists
The IBM SmartCamp Global Final will take place over four days: broken into master class day, mentoring day and the public finale. The other finalists are:
- Tennessee-based SecureWaters
- Bangalore, India-based ConnectM.
- Barcelona, Spain-based BitCarrier
- Bucharest, Romania-based Skin Scan
- Boston-based Localytics
- Brazilian company IDXP
- Chinese company PalmapIsraeli company C-B4
