SYRACUSE — The firm that won the $1 million grand prize in the second installment of the Genius NY business-accelerator competition plans to use the funding to “accelerate” its operations. That’s according to Christopher McCall, CEO of Fotokite, who spoke with CNYBJ following the April 9 awards ceremony in Syracuse. The prize will help “…build the […]
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SYRACUSE — The firm that won the $1 million grand prize in the second installment of the Genius NY business-accelerator competition plans to use the funding to “accelerate” its operations.
That’s according to Christopher McCall, CEO of Fotokite, who spoke with CNYBJ following the April 9 awards ceremony in Syracuse.
The prize will help “…build the presence here, to move faster toward real-world solutions in this space. We’re all about trying to get to the application and try to get to the real end-users and customers and help them in their missions,” says McCall.
Fotokite, a firm based in Switzerland, was one of six Genius NY finalists that competed during the competition’s pitch night held April 9 at the Marriot Syracuse Downtown.
Fotokites are tethered drone systems that work like a 200-foot tower, “flying fully autonomously and deploying with the push of a button,” according to a description in the event program. Fotokite provides firefighters and fire departments with a “live aerial situational awareness tool to help them save lives and preserve property,” the description said.
Fotokite currently has 14 employees, including one in Syracuse, according to McCall. Most of its workers focus on research and development in Switzerland. Fotokite wants to assemble a sales and business-development team and manufacturing for a U.S.–made product.
“That’s exactly the mission that we came over here [for] and participated in the Genius NY program to achieve,” says McCall.
Genius NY stands for Growing ENtrepreneurs & Innovators in UpState New York.
The initiative is “one of the world’s largest business competitions focused on unmanned systems, cross-connected platforms and other technology-based sectors,” according to the office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Genius NY, a year-long business accelerator, awarded six finalist teams a total of nearly $3 million at the pitch event. The awards included prizes of $1 million, $600,000, $400,000, and three $250,000 awards.
Participants are required to operate their business in Central New York for at least one year.
Empire State Development Corporation, New York’s primary economic-development agency, supports the Genius NY program.
Other winners
In addition to Fotokite, Quantifly was awarded the second place prize of $600,000; TruWeather took third place, winning $400,000; while three finalists, UsPLM, Dropcopter, and Precision Vision all were awarded $250,000. TruWeather was also named the crowd favorite in a live poll taken during the event.
Besides Fotokite, CenterState CEO provided the following descriptions of the additional finalists selected for Genius NY 2.0.
• UsPLM of Syracuse “provides a collaborative environment for all stakeholders” to develop, test, deploy, and safely operate a single or a fleet of UAS. UsPLM can integrate UAS, Internet-of-Things (IoT) and product lifecycle management (PLM) technologies, “which is missing in the current UAS ecosystem.”
• Dropcopter of California is an agriculture technology startup that has developed patent-pending technology to allow farmers to pollinate orchards via drones. The recent decline of bee populations has raised pollination prices “significantly, creating a compelling” market for alternative technologies such as Dropcopter.
• Precision Vision of New Mexico creates image-processing technology that makes real-time precision imaging an “affordable reality.” Precision imaging locates each pixel at a known 2D or 3D referenced location in every image. The company says it has “unique” software and knowledge to provide “low-cost, real-time” precision imaging to open new markets.
• Quantifly of Michigan is an IoT product that “simplifies and reduces” the costs of parking and traffic studies through the unification of UAS, machine vision, and analytics by “eliminating human error, mitigating safety risks, and centralizing harvested data.” It is the “first to market,” and the firm’s product aims to be the “quintessential” app for urban planners focused on smart-city applications and sustainability.
• TruWeather of Virginia is building a service to “improve” the precision, accuracy and communication of weather intelligence specifically for the UAV enterprise. The company will develop, commercialize and market the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) weather risk management service for beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) UAV operations and offer it as a SaaS (software as a service) business.
