Dublin start-up Danalto is adapting IoT technology to meet the needs of all, writes Trish Dromey.
FLOOD risk management, sustainable energy monitoring and remote patient monitoring are some of the diverse uses for the Internet of Things (IoT) enabling and accelerating technology, being developed by Dublin startup Danalto.
For the two-year-old company, set up as a spin-out from Trinity College in mid-2017, the rapidly emerging global IoT technology market is now seen as a wide open opportunity.
Using low power wide area network (LPWAN) technology, danalto develops holistic connectivity solutions and intelligence technologies which, says company CEO and co-founder David McDonald, provide practical solutions for real-world problems.
“Our deployment, data attestation, and enabling technologies mean we can customise long-range and lower-power solutions depending on customer needs — be it city, department store, factory, or national-scale government agency. For enterprises, we provide the services and technologies that ensure they are always connected to their realtime business intelligence.”
Forming Danalto in 2017, Mr McDonald was joined by Tom Farrell and Albert Baker, who had been involved in the delivery of Pervasive Nation, a national scale IoT network.
Aiming to make IoT service and technology adoption and deployment easy for companies, danalto started out by focusing on enterprise solutions.
“We provide operational intelligence for companies in the manufacturing and energy management sector,” said Mr McDonald, explaining that the technology is typically employed for measuring systems’ inputs and outputs and analysing the data to provide efficiency insights.
Since 2018, Danalto has also worked on Smart Energy, Smart Cities, and infrastructure management solutions.
“We have delivered differentiated solutions for asset-tracking, energy- management, and smart city risk management,” said Mr McDonald, adding that the company’s customers now include public authorities, telecom operators, IT service companies, and energy management companies.
Working with Dublin City Council, danalto developed GullySpy, an environmental service designed to provide insight and early warning intelligence of flood risks, using sensor systems to detect when street-level gullies are overflowing. Mr McDonald said danalto and its delivery partners are now rolling out this technology to users in the UK, mainland Europe, and India.
On one of its projects in sustainable energy management, danalto is using technology for the monitoring , analysis and efficiency assessment of deep retrofits of buildings in order to measure the energy savings and impacts of such refurbishments. Mr McDonald says this technology is now being rapidly adopted by energy management agencies in Ireland.
At the end of 2018, Danalto, as part of project Nex, received €3 million from the Irish Government’s Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund to develop a remote patient-monitoring system.
“This is being designed for use in monitoring the care of the elderly remotely and also for the remote care of rehabilitation patients,” said Mr McDonald.
Last year, danalto raised €750,000 in seed funding from Atlantic Bridge University Funding and the High Potential Start Up Fund from Enterprise Ireland.
The funding allowed the company to increase its R&D staff, as well as accelerate some of its projects.
By the end of this year we expect to have more than 10 staff and, on the basis of our forecasted commercial opportunities, to have grown our staff to 20 by the end of 2020.
Although the company has worked directly with end customers to date, it is primarily focused on working with delivery partners.
“We now have a sales focus in the Benelux region. Also, and despite Brexit, we see the UK market as a major opportunity for the company across a number of areas,” said Mr McDonald.
Having successfully validated its technology, danalto is now ready to take the company to the next level.
Expecting to achieve a 300% growth in sales this year, he plans to grow exports by 50% next year.
“Working closely with UK and European technology and solution partners in smart energy and city applications, we are now delivering large-scale IoT solutions and projects in Ireland and overseas,” he added.
