Martin O’Connell of Nasal Medical with an AIB Start-up Academy award
Business & Finance highlights some of the top movers and shakers in Ireland.
What is it? Nasal Medical is a medical device company that creates anatomically designed nasal products for healthy breathing. They have three products covering five target markets: pollution, allergy, sleeping disorders (mild sleep apnea and snoring), congestion and sports enhancement. The company has worked to ensure that the devices are affordable to all, and they are clinically tested, user-friendly, drug-free and available without prescription. Who’s behind it? Martin O’Connell set up the company in 2014. From an electrical engineering background, he came up with the idea after the cattle on his family farm were wiped out with TB. He designed a device that could filter the TB with electrostatic material, and discovering there was a market in Asia due to high levels of pollution he decided to apply this new filtering device to humans. O’Connell developed it in conjunction with the other director, Keith Yeager, a biomedical engineer.
Nasal Medical received a feasibility grant from Enterprise Ireland. Having won the AIB Start-Up Academy, they received an overall prize valued at €250,000. Additionally, they have received advice and support from organisations such as the Local Enterprise Office and Enterprise Ireland.
They are based in the Guinness Enterprise Centre in Dublin and so work closely with Dublin BIC.
They currently have a deal with a distributor who supplies up to 1,800 pharmacies in Ireland and recently conducted a deal with a large UK-based company who will sell the product in their stores.
With distributors lined up in Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, it is their goal to expand to other international markets including Asia and the USA.
Business & Finance, in association with Comtrade, recognises Ireland’s most dynamic emerging businesses in ‘Ones to Watch’. Ireland is alive with a vibrant start-up scene and the entrepreneurs featured are shaping the country’s economic landscape.
