By Business & Finance 
Students Evan Smith, Melvyn Galvin and Colm Cahalane with Bill Archer, managing director, eircom Business Solutions.
A total of 11 promising tech start-ups from Ireland, the US, Poland and India have been selected to participate in Lab353, the accelerator and investment programme led by SVG Partners and eircom Business Solutions.
The successful mobile, cloud and ‘Internet of Things’ start-ups will enter a nine week ‘boot camp’ style programme, beginning next Wednesday, March 25th, with the aim of establishing or scaling commercially viable operations in Europe and the US.
The start-ups will be located in eircom’s Internet House in Temple Bar for the duration of the programme, where they will have access to markets, infrastructure capability, strategic management consulting, a global network of mentors from Silicon Valley and Ireland, as well as corporate, legal and tax services through Lab353 partners.
Following the nine-week programme, the companies will pitch their ideas to a group of influential investors at the ITLG Silicon Valley Global Tech Summit in Dublin, with the aim of securing up to $1m investment each.
Originally, 10 companies were to be chosen from a shortlist of 40, who yesterday pitched to a panel of 20 high profile judges, including Sonya Flynn, managing director, Facebook Ireland, Barry O’Sullivan, CEO, Altocloud, Helene Graham, chief technology officer, eircom, John Hartnett, founder and CEO, SVG Partners and NilaKanthi Ford, chairperson of the Irish India Business Association.
However, the judges were so impressed by young start up NativeNote that they decided to bring them through as an extra finalist, bringing the total to eleven.
The successful start-ups are as follows:
1. Kinetise (Warsaw, Poland)
Kinetise is a tool for visual programming of mobile apps, where even complex apps can be built in under 24 hours. Instead, client can design his own app in a web-based drag&drop interface
2. BFC Analytics Ltd (Dublin, Ireland)
BFC Analytics combines expertise from biology, finance and cyber to change how cyber insurance is written.
3. TVAdSync (Dublin, Ireland)
TVadSync enables advertisers to exploit new mulitiscreen, multitasking behaviours of television audiences by monitoring live television broadcasts and detects when ads air and triggers a heavy burst of online advertising.
4. C-LabsLLC (Washington, USA)
C-Labs serves industrial automation customers who need remote and mobile access to factory and other industrial equipment and a gateway to legacy industrial protocols.
5. Legalshine (Dublin, Ireland)
Legalshine is a tool for large organisations to reduce and control their legal costs using text analytics to read legal invoices and then benchmark the spending.
6. Inpofi – Kirk H&J Corporation (California, USA)
Inpofi focuses on the challenging issues concerning power transfer efficiency and meeting the demands of a growing market for a safe, fast and convenient wireless charging experience.
7. Cloud KPI Ltd (Wicklow, Ireland)
CloudKPI delivers real-time KPI and analytics to SME business owners via their smart devices.
8. Xunity.TV (Dublin, Ireland)
Xunity.TV implemented their product, iStream across their app and retail range. iStream acts like a bookmarking tool to save video content websites to view on TV.
9. Quantum Touch (Dublin, Ireland)
Quantum Touch builds apps across Apple/Android platforms- using a SmartFitApps builder solution- easier and cheaper through machined processes.
10. Flip Technologies (Kerala, India)
Flip Technologies is primarily an Internet of Things company designing and developing activity tracking devices for action sports like Skateboarding, Snowboarding, Ski, Motocross etc.
11. NativeNote (Dublin, Ireland)
NativeNote.com is a note-sharing platform built to easily distribute and index notes for individuals, organisations and study groups.
Enda Doyle, director of Business Development and Innovation, eircom Business Solutions, said: “This is a unique opportunity for tech start-ups to establish or scale their operations in Europe and beyond and achieve their dreams of turning the next big idea into reality. Companies in the programme will get access to top technology leaders and mentors from Silicon Valley and Ireland, access to markets and the chance to raise capital, all from eircom’s Internet House in the heart of Dublin.”
John Hartnett, founder and CEO of SVG Partners, said: “We believe that the businesses chosen to enter Lab353 are the hottest mobile, cloud and ‘Internet of Things’ start-ups. It is clear that the potential for these businesses is huge and Lab353 will give them the support and guidance they need to rapidly architect, scale and support commercially-viable solutions.”
