Today (13 May), the company announced that it has secured €1.5m in a funding round led by Delta Partners, with backing by Movidius co-founder Sean Mitchell, Amici Ventures and Vincent Nolan, who is a former CIO for some of Ireland’s biggest retailers.

The start-up also revealed that it is rebranding to a new name, VisionR.

VisionR’s founders said the funding boost would be used to expand its development team and support its growth in Europe.

The company aims to give clients in the offline retail industry online insights. It works with brick-and-mortar retailers in the grocery, convenience and fashion spaces, with customers including Dulux Paints and BWG Foods.

It has also partnered with Spar International, which will roll out the company’s tech across its 13,500 stores in 48 countries.

VisionR uses a next-generation AI plug-in tool called The Scout to take data straight from a retailer’s shop floor so physical transactions and customer interactions can be logged and converted into online data that retailers can access.

“It’s focused on retailers,” co-founder Shane O’Sullivan explained to the Irish Times. “Retailers everywhere are used to getting rich datasets online from e-commerce, but those datasets don’t translate to their offline stores.

“The online stores can optimise layout using this data, they can reduced abandoned baskets, they can personalise shopping – all the stuff that maximises revenues. But for physical stores, the same optimisations can’t be done because that same data set has never existed when it comes to the physical store.”

The company uses computer vision and machine learning, and can capture customer data without using facial recognition. It uses facial detection instead so as not impinge on customer privacy, and the tech was developed in 2017 as GDPR came into law.

VisionR previously raised €550,000 in 2020 and has been backed by Enterprise Ireland.

The start-up has recently moved into new offices in Merrion Row in Dublin, which it hopes will give it room to expand further in the coming years.

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“One of my comments when I was walking around, in terms of start-ups located there, they can only go down from there. In terms of location, you would absolutely have location envy walking around it,” she told an audience at Future Human’s second day today (13 May).

The RDI Hub in Kerry is one of many spaces across Ireland that support the country’s thriving tech start-up ecosystem. And playing a big role in its development is Enterprise Ireland.

Melia leads the organisation’s high-potential start-up (HPSU) team at Enterprise Ireland and, having been with the organisation for more than a quarter of a century, she has seen the community change and evolve like few others.

“We’re very much about growing the indigenous client base and then building the footprint of that client base in international markets across the world. It’s also about creating jobs in Ireland, across all the regions.”

Beyond Dublin

Speaking of regions, she much prefers a balanced regional development over a Dublin-centric development of the community.

The west of Ireland, for instance, is home to a buzzing medtech scene with both established, multinational players as well as local start-ups working side-by-side, in a cluster.

“I think it’s fair to say that over the years some of [the clustering] has been organic. If you look at the medtech cluster in the West, a lot of it was driven by the companies themselves,” Melia told the audience.

And driving that decision to choose Galway is the region’s abundance of talent as well as that clustering of SMEs adjacent to multinationals – driving collaboration on innovation across the ecosystem.

In all, Enterprise Ireland has nine regional plans in place at the moment, with a strategic investment of around $180m going through the Regional Enterprise Development Fund.

“It’s important for us that all the local stakeholders are involved at both the public and private level. It’s very much driven then by local business leaders.”

Ireland and beyond

When asked about the altruistic nature of successful businesses that give back to the ecosystem that churned them out, Melia thinks Ireland is a specifically good example of this quality.

“I think Irish entrepreneurs are very good at that, in my experience with EI for 20 years, in terms of people throwing the ladder down,” she said. “But it’s not all one-way traffic. The more established companies are learning from the younger companies as well.”

And the strength of this ecosystem has come a long way in Melia’s two-decade-long-career, in terms of the funding and non-financial supports available to Irish business in their early stages.

“We need to have funds on the scale that we see in other countries and to give founders and management teams a fair valuation.”

‘If you can see it, you can be it’

But in terms of start-ups choosing Ireland as their destination, Melia thinks we a big advantage because of the money coming in from abroad.

“There’s a lot of competition around Europe to attract mobile start-ups, and we’re absolutely at the table,” she said. “And one of the biggest strengths of the Irish ecosystem is the size of the multinational and FDI footprint.”

This has made Ireland very different from the country it used to be when big players such as Stripe and Intercom first started off, responding to a question about how Irish start-ups are now not just acquirees but also acquirers.

“The ambition levels are definitely there, and companies tell us about accessible role-models,” she said, citing Ireland’s tech unicorns such as Wayflyer and LetsGetChecked.

“They can see the Intercoms, they can see the Stripes, and there is that concept of ‘if you can see it, you can be it’.”

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The Irish unicorn plans to use this to increase its market share and reduce its cost of capital, allowing it to offer more competitive rates to e-commerce businesses in the US, western Europe and Australia.

Wayflyer provides e-commerce merchants with a range of financing and marketing analytics tools to help them access working capital, improve cash flow and drive sales.

It has already started deploying the financing received from JP Morgan.

This news comes just a few months after Wayflyer raised $150m in Series B funding, valuing the start-up at $1.6bn and making it Ireland’s latest tech unicorn.

JP Morgan was one of the backers of that all-equity round, which was led by DST Global and QED Investors.

Wayflyer said the combination of the Series B funding and the new debt financing line will help the company on its growth trajectory.

“With e-commerce revenues set to hit $5.4trn in 2022, the need for competitively priced funding solutions is greater than ever,” said Aidan Corbett, CEO and co-founder of Wayflyer.

“The $300m debt financing we’ve secured and partly deployed from JP Morgan will help us seize this opportunity, and enable us to offer the most competitive rates in the market to more effectively help ambitious e-commerce businesses realise their growth potential.”

Dublin-based Wayflyer has been expanding rapidly since it was founded in 2019 by Corbett and Jack Pierse. Its monthly capital deployments increased by more than 900pc last year to hit $100m.

Its headcount also jumped by 525pc last year and it plans to hire more than 400 people across its global offices by the end of this year.

Last week, Wayflyer announced that it is moving into the influencer market with the purchase of creator funding provider Peblo. Following this deal, the e-commerce financing company said it would advance more than $500m to creators over the next year.

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Stanhope Financial Group, also known as SH Financial, provides businesses with a one-stop-shop suite of international treasury services. It aims to enable its SME and MME clients bypass delays, multiple providers and unfair charges.

The company only began operating last year, and it has experienced significant growth across all divisions since then.

The funds from its Series A round will be used to strengthen and develop its services. This is to include the launch of an affiliate digital assets division called SH Digital, which will offer cryptocurrency liquidity and trading services.

Mohit Davar, executive chair of Stanhope Financial Group, said the funding would enable the company to expand its key divisions, which have “already made huge inroads into the market.”

“With the upcoming launch of our new digital affiliate, we have the perfect team and fintech platform in place to drive growth for our customers,” he added.

“The adoption of cryptocurrency and convergence with mainstream traditional banking has accelerated the need for Gate.io to work with innovative and regulated companies like Stanhope Group to further develop our product portfolio and continue to build innovative solutions for our customers,” according to Kevin Yang, investment director of Gate Ventures.

Stanhope Financial Group already has a payments division, which is licensed as an electronic money institution. SH Payments offers businesses banking services to send and receive money internationally.

Its capital division is licensed in the DIFC in Dubai to allow institutions and family offices to gain access to global investment products across all capital markets.

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The Irish company already provides businesses in Ireland, the UK, the US and Europe with remote identity and address verification using biometric, facial matching, liveness testing, address verification and document checks.

“We’re looking forward to officially launching in the UK market and empowering more businesses with simple, secure convenient identity verification for their business and their customers, ” said co-founder and CEO Colum Lyons.

In 2020, ID-Pal raised €1m in a funding round led by Act Venture Capital and other private investors to accelerate its global expansion. In the past two years, the business has benefitted from companies’ mass shift to online operations.

ID-Pal’s clients include large enterprises such as Grant Thornton and Zurich International, as well as SMEs such as UK Adviser and Trust My Travel.

The start-up’s tech covers more than 6,000 ID documents across 200 countries and jurisdictions, and it aims to make customer onboarding easier for clients. It is available off the shelf or as an API/SDK for developers. ID-Pal said its tech is also GDPR compliant and can be configured for any jurisdiction or legal requirement in any language.

Lyons said that the way in which identity verification has been done historically is “just not sustainable” in a digital-first mobile-ready world.

“Verifying identity documents manually is inefficient and insecure, and the risk of data flight and simple human error can make businesses vulnerable to fraud,” he added.

“Our unique blend of ID checks, all powered by a completely technology-first process, means multi-layered verification takes place on any ID document in real time. Using AI and machine-learning offers greater accuracy in correctly classifying a document and reduces the margin for error and need for manual intervention.”

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The BioBridge partnership is designed to provide gateway options for Irish entrepreneurs, researchers, clinicians and industry partners to collaborate with TMC to solve global health challenges.

The partnership is focused on advancing health and life sciences through commercialisation, innovation and research. Research collaborations will focus on identifying opportunities for clinical research and clinical trial activities.

Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Leo Varadkar, TD, said the partnership is a “very positive development” that will drive further opportunities to bring “Irish healthcare innovation to the world”.

“Years of investment by Government and industry has created a concentrated community of innovation and expertise within Ireland that is breaking new ground and making a major contribution to international healthcare.”

The partnership is also designed to boost patient health and care experiences through new medical devices, digital health developments and therapeutics. TMC hosts 10m patients and performs more than 180,000 surgeries each year.

“Ireland is a European leader in medical devices,” Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, TD, said. “This partnership will provide Irish companies and entrepreneurs with increased market access to develop the next life-saving healthcare company.”

Irish medtech companies have already been working with TMC, as Galway start-ups Lifelet Medical and AuriGen Medical have participated in TMC’s HealthTech Accelerator programme. These start-ups have previously been awarded collaborative funding under Ireland’s Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund administered by Enterprise Ireland.

“The size, scale and reputation of Texas Medical Center brings new opportunities for Irish companies to innovate and scale and enter the US market,” Enterprise Ireland CEO Leo Clancy said.

“Enterprise Ireland places a strong focus on driving innovation in the medtech industry and facilitating successful partnerships between Irish companies and influential global healthcare systems.”

Last year, Enterprise Ireland also entered a partnership with New York-based healthcare provider Northwell Health with the aim of spotlighting Irish medtechs and helping them break into the US market.

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Announced today (9 May), the AIB Foresight SME Impact Fund aims to raise €75m to invest in green business ideas in Ireland. AIB has already provided a €30m cornerstone investment to the fund.

Equity investments from the fund will typically range between €2m and €5m, but AIB said that investment values are flexible according to individual needs.

The all-island fund, expected to reach first close shortly, will back small and medium-sized businesses across a whole range of industries.

“We will seek to invest across the spectrum of the low-carbon agenda, from companies enabling the circular economy, to advanced technology which supports smart cities,” said Foresight partner James Livingston.

“Energy generation is just the start of the low-carbon journey, and we need to change the way we live, work, what we consume and how we travel.”

Globally, Foresight said its sustainable infrastructure investment division manages more than 300 sustainable assets and generates power from more than 3GW of green energy assets.

Livingston added that the partnership with AIB will see the London-based investment group open a brand new Dublin office soon.

Cathy Bryce, managing director of AIB capital markets, said that Foresight’s experience and strong focus on ESG will be “invaluable to companies with big ambitions to play a role in Ireland’s transition to a low-carbon economy”.

“AIB is committed to supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy, reducing our own carbon footprint and helping our customers to do the same. Our ambition is that green and transition lending will account for 70pc of new lending by 2030,” she said.

“But as well as taking action through lending, AIB is ensuring equity has a key role to play in backing the green businesses of the future.”

Last year, AIB revealed plans to launch a green equity fund for Irish SMEs after acquiring Goodbody Stockbrokers for €138m.

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“While executing a manual paper-based task at a supplier’s facility in Sweden, we got a call from the large multinational client to down tools and get home immediately. Ireland was going into lockdown,” he recalled.

“It was at this moment I realised that this paper-based task could be executed digitally without flying halfway around the globe.”

And that’s how Ward found himself “building the blockchain future of biotech”.

Founded last year, ServBlock uses blockchain-based auditing and compliance to help pharma manufacturers guarantee quality across their supply chain.

“As more and more pharmaceutical and biotech companies choose to outsource their manufacturing projects, companies must evaluate the performance of their contract manufacturing organisations and determine whether it meets industry and regulatory standards,” Ward explained.

“ServBlock’s compliance management software helps ensure pharmaceutical contract manufacturers adhere to the same integrity, compliance and quality operations as in-house manufacturing.”

Ward said ServBlock’s technology can improve processes in supply chains adhering to good manufacturing practice (GMP) standards.

“The complexity and the lack of transparency, coordination and trust among stakeholders in GMP supply chains can be greatly reduced by the introduction of blockchain or distributed ledger technology,” he said. “ServBlock allows for data security, traceability and trust between counterparties that current industrial complexes lack.”

Data from ServBlock is presented to clients via a tailored dashboard that can be configured to the needs of different manufacturing roles. This, Ward explained, allows for “continuous auditing of the process through a permission matrix and distributed ledger technology, while ensuring every party to the audit has access only to the information required for their role”.

‘Our goal at ServBlock is to reduce the cost of drugs to the patient’
^{– JOHN WARD}

ServBlock is a family business founded by Ward and brothers Thomas and Kevin, headquartered in their home county of Wicklow.

“[We] have a long track record in business together,” said CEO Ward. “Thomas has a long track record in the tech industry and has led teams as a principal cloud engineer in the likes of Microsoft and Oracle. We call Kevin the sales genius as he has managed to turn the last business the three of us founded – Reward Catering – into one of the largest manufacturers in its category in Europe.”

Ward himself comes from a science background. He initially studied chemistry and spent the last decade consulting in the biotech industry, “providing validation and compliance services to many of the household names in pharma”.

It was through this experience that the idea for ServBlock came about. “I am the frustrated end user in the process,” he said. The cause of his frustration was the lack of digitisation in what is largely considered a cutting-edge field in the STEM industries. But the real end user that stands to gain from ServBlock’s technology is the patient receiving medication.

“Our goal at ServBlock is to reduce the cost of drugs to the patient by eliminating the inefficiencies of verification and re-verification that currently exist,” said Ward. “And, perhaps more importantly, [to reduce] the time it takes to get these life-saving medicines to the people that need them.”

‘We aim to hire a founding engineering team to bring engineering in house’
^{– JOHN WARD}

Ward and his team of sibling co-founders have completely bootstrapped ServBlock up to now, but they plan to initiate a seed round later this year. This will no doubt go toward building a team, as ServBlock is currently hiring.

“We aim to hire a founding engineering team to bring engineering in house,” said Ward. “Kevin is busy building out our sales team with the aim of hitting the ground running as we have just successfully launched our traceability platform. This has all taken place in the background of our first deployments across client sites.”

As is evident, things are “extremely busy” for this young start-up and its experienced founders.

One of the company’s biggest challenges has been in explaining itself. “As we are utilising a relatively new technology, customer education has been a key enabler,” said Ward.

Another key factor enabling ServBlock is a “healthy and vibrant” start-up scene here in Ireland. “We have been lucky enough to have the support of our Local Enterprise Office in Wicklow, who have been superb. We have also participated in some start-up programmes offered through the NDRC,” said Ward.

“It has been absolutely invaluable to us in both practical execution terms but also with networking and mentorship. We really couldn’t speak highly enough of how much these programmes have helped us.”

And that hasn’t stopped ServBlock aiming beyond Ireland and connecting with international programmes. The business recently joined Microsoft for Startups and US-headquartered R3’s venture development programme, offering a gateway into the latter’s enterprise blockchain ecosystem. The Irish start-up was also recently selected for CV Labs’ incubator in Zug, Switzerland’s ‘crypto valley’.

All of this feeds into CEO Ward’s plans to “supercharge” growth in 2022.

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One might think it natural that Irish companies were well represented in an event held in Ireland’s capital, but the CEO of MedTech Innovator, one of the world’s leading accelerators for medtech companies, thinks it has to do with the country’s undeniable strength in the sector more than anything else.

Paul Grand, a venture capitalist by profession, founded MedTech Innovator in 2013 to close the widening gap between medical device companies and sources of funding in the immediate aftermath of the financial crash.

Over the years, the California-headquartered non-profit has funded and mentored hundreds of start-ups in the medtech and health-tech space, with programmes available to companies across the US, Europe and Asia.

More than 1,000 companies apply to be part of its accelerator programmes every year, of which only 50 are selected for the opportunity to grow and scale their business ideas.

“At this point, MedTech Innovator is the largest accelerator in the world for medical technology, even including pharma – which we don’t include in our programme,” Grand told SiliconRepublic.com.

“Last year, of all the funding that happened in this sector globally, 20pc went to our portfolio. That’s one in five companies – showing that we have huge scale in this space.”

The accelerator boasts 420 companies in its portfolio, including big names in the global medtech space such as Medable, the decentralised medical trials company that has its EMEA headquarters in Dublin, and Osso VR, a virtual reality medical training company.

Ireland’s exceptional performance

Grand is a “big fan” of the Irish start-up ecosystem and sees Ireland as one of the strongest performing countries in MedTech Innovator every year.

“The Irish medtech ecosystem, particularly in Galway and Dublin, is amazing. Many MedTech Innovator companies that made it to the finals over the years have been from Ireland,” he said. “Almost every time, we have somebody up on the finals stage from Ireland.”

Last year, four companies from Galway – Atrian Medical, Lifelet Medical, Neurent Medical and Tympany Medical – were selected for the international MedTech Innovator 2021 programme to show off their innovations to global investors.

And at the Dublin pitching event last week, six of the 27 companies participating were from Ireland: Vertigenius, SymPhysis Medical, InjurySense, Phyxiom, Pumpinheart and Head Diagnostics. Israel followed in second place with five start-ups and France had three.

SymPhysis Medical, which raised €1.9m in funding last month for its palliative care device, went on to win the event, while Vertigenius and Head Diagnostics were among the top five finalists.

Congratulations to @SymphysisMed, winner of the #MedTechInnovator 2022 International Pitch Competition!

Thank to you to our event partners, @tcddublin, @RCSI_Irl, and @MedTechStrat! pic.twitter.com/9EVGhgFvOB

— MedTech Innovator (@MedTechAwards) May 4, 2022

Grand said that Ireland’s unusually high performance in proportion to its size might have to do with the Government initiatives through bodies such as Enterprise Ireland and third-level institutions that provide the necessary supports for start-ups to thrive.

Alan Hobbs of Enterprise Ireland told SiliconRepublic.com last year that an estimated 180 domestic life sciences companies in Ireland employ more than 25,000 people and generate sales above $6bn per year. These indigenous life sciences companies span pharma, biotech, diagnostics and therapeutics, but the lion’s share are medical device businesses.

“This ecosystem is incredibly purposeful, just the way it was built by the Government setting up infrastructure so that companies have all the support they need,” said Grand. “And then what we bring is off-island expertise on the US market to help Irish-based companies succeed abroad.”

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Finalists from across the island are competing for this prestigious award yet again, with entrepreneurs from sectors such as technology, manufacturing, energy and health competing across three categories: emerging, established and international.

Last year’s top prize was picked up by Brian O’Sullivan of Zeus Packaging, with the founders of big Irish tech names such as Flipdish and LetsGetChecked also in the running.

Here we take a closer look at the Irish tech entrepreneurs nominated for EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2022, including many familiar names that are taking their businesses to new heights in Ireland and across the world.

John Harkin, Alchemy Technology Services

Founded in Derry in 2018, Alchemy Technology Services is a start-up that provides insurance software implementation services to insurance companies across Europe.

At the helm is Derry-native John Harkin, who founded Alchemy when he saw a demand for specialist skills to help the insurance industry through digital transformation.

Allan Beechinor and Niamh Parker, Altada

Cork-based Altada is a fast-growing deep-learning and AI start-up founded by CEO Allan Beechinor and chief legal officer Niamh Parker four years ago.

Altada has developed its own proprietary deep learning algorithms, predictive models, computer perception algorithms and knowledge extraction systems to help clients deploy and execute AI in their businesses. Its name pays homage to the world’s first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace.

Alan Carson, Cloudsmith

Cloudsmith is a software start-up that helps businesses manage software on the cloud – removing the need to hire in-house support staff and cutting down on expenses. Based in Belfast, the company was founded by Alan Carson and Lee Skillen, both of whom are former NYSE developers.

Carson is the CEO of Cloudsmith, which raised $15m in Series A funding last September to help it expand in the US.

Caroline Dunlea, Core Optimisation

Caroline Dunlea is the co-founder and CEO of digital marketing start-up Core Optimisation, which helps businesses across the tourism, hospitality and retail sectors with digital transformation. It has offices in Shannon, where it was founded in 2015, as well as Dublin and London.

Helen Cahill, InvoiceFair

InvoiceFair is an invoice trading platform that was established by Helen Cahill and Philip Hickey in 2015. Based in Dublin, the start-up helps companies with approved invoices or purchase orders from blue-chip or State companies to raise funds and complete the deals.

It saw an increase in activity in 2020 when it facilitated funding of €30m for PPE orders, according to the Irish Times.

Stephen Nolan, Nutritics

Having recently opened its Australian headquarters in Sydney, Irish software start-up Nutritics has been expanding rapidly. Founded in 2013 by brothers Damian and Ciarán O’Kelly, Nutritics provides nutrition software to clients in healthcare, elite sports, food services, food manufacturing and education.

Stephen Nolan now serves as managing director of the Dublin-headquartered company.

Fionn Lahart and Christoph Hennersperger, OneProjects

OneProjects is an Irish-German medtech developing a device to help doctors treat atrial fibrillation using advanced imaging and data analytics. It was founded by CEO Fionn Lahart and CTO Christoph Hennersperger in 2017 as a spin-out from the BioInnovate programme in Galway, and now has offices in Dublin and Munich.

In October 2021, OneProjects raised $17m in fresh financing to continue developing its technology.

Justin Lawless, Intact

Justin Lawless is the CEO of Intact, a software development company based in Dundalk, Co Louth, that has been around since 1992. Intact, which also has offices in Cork, Bray and the UK, makes enterprise resource planning and business management software for companies.

The company expanded significantly in Ireland and the UK last year, when it announced new jobs that would bring its total headcount to around 200.

John O’Sullivan, BioAtlantis

BioAtlantis is an Irish biotech company headquartered in Tralee, Co Kerry, which develops natural compounds to improve plant, animal and human health. Founded by chartered accountant John O’Sullivan in 2004, BioAtlantis received substantial early investments from the Bank of Ireland Kernel Capital Fund.

Jamie O’Rourke, Mainline

Jamie O’Rourke is the CEO of Cork-based Mainline Group, an engineering services provider to those in the power, water, telecom and energy sectors operating in Ireland, the UK and Scandinavia.

O’Rourke has led the company for more than a decade. Mainline’s clients include Vodafone, SSE Airtricity and Energia.

Martin McKay, Texthelp

Martin McKay is CEO of Belfast-based education technology company Texthelp. He was one of the founding members of business, which was set up in 1996 to help people with communication difficulties.

Its literacy, accessibility and dyslexia software products are now used in both the education and corporate sectors by millions of people around the world.

Aidan Corbett and Jack Pierse, Wayflyer

Wayflyer is fast becoming a household name in the Irish tech world, after it whizzed past the billion-dollar valuation mark earlier this year to become Ireland’s sixth and latest unicorn. The revenue-based financing and growth platform for e-commerce companies was founded by Aidan Corbett and Jack Pierse in 2019.

Last month, Wayflyer announced plans to grow its global headcount from 250 to 600 by the end of the year across its offices in Dublin, Atlanta, London and Sydney. This week, it revealed that it has made its first major acquisition, snapping up creator funding provider Peblo.

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