From access to grants, state-of-the-art technology and co-innovation opportunities, the IoT Innovation Challenge 2018 co-organised by IPI, Enterprise Singapore and the Centre of Innovation for Electronics & IoT has helped four Singapore start-ups fast-track their goals. We speak to them to find out how the competition has transformed their businesses.
SpaceAge Labs
Deepak Pitta
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
What's unique about your business?
SpaceAge is revolutionising how companies operate and maintain remote and distributed assets through IoT devices, low power wireless connectivity and enterprise grade IoT, and machine learning software. We essentially help our customers digitalise their businesses in industries such as water, urban greenery, landscape and outdoor facilities management.
Our business can deliver full stack IoT solutions, from hardware to connectivity and software, while ensuring performance and cybersecurity.
What industry challenge did you pick?
We picked Singtel’s problem statement that required us to propose an IoT solution to track assets with high accuracy in outdoor environments.
Our solution, Warbler, can track outdoor assets at submetre accuracy (compared to 3-5 metres by standard GPS trackers) and transmit the position data in real time via cutting-edge wireless IoT networks, such as Long Term Evolution Machine Type Communication (LTE-M) and Narrow-Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT).
Our software analyses and uses the position data to build applications that track workers or equipment on worksites, build asset maps in real time and enable performance-based contracting for outdoor work such as road sweeping and grass cutting.
How has the IoT Challenge impacted your company?
This IoT Challenge has not only helped us improve our technical capabilities, but also helped us build relationships with key strategic partners and potential customers. We believe that in the next 12 to 18 months, this product and these relationships will contribute significantly to our sales.
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SenzeHub
George Heng
Chief Executive Officer
What’s unique about your business?
Using analytics, we create wearable device solutions that measure key health indicators to detect potential crises that might arise. This includes collecting details like the patient’s present location, his vital signs reading and health abnormalities.
In particular, we focus on large scale multi-user monitoring of data in places like hospitals and nursing homes.
What industry challenge did you pick?
My dad was hospitalised for four months in 2018 and I saw first-hand the heavy workload of nurses who had to collect patients’ vital signs data once every four hours.
Coincidentally, about a month later, this appeared as a problem statement during the IoT challenge.
Hence, we developed a wearable solution to measure and transmit data automatically, which would allow hospitals to care for more patients in the same amount of time.
How has the IoT Challenge impacted your company?
As a start-up, the designing and manufacturing of physical products can be costly. The grant helps us to defray production costs.
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AEvice Health
Rex Tan
Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer
What’s unique about your business?
We are a healthcare start-up that develops smart wearable devices, mobile platforms and analytics to improve the lives of patients suffering from chronic respiratory conditions.
What industry challenge did you pick?
Airesone, our patented wearable device, helps children with asthma better monitor their condition. But we have always wanted to scale up our product to target adults with underlying respiratory and health conditions as well, and chose to focus on that at the IoT Challenge.
We knew that the support and guidance we would get at the challenge would help us fast-track our goal of expanding our technologies and growing our consumer base.
How has the IoT Challenge impacted your company?
It gave us the opportunity to partner Aztech Technologies to develop our prototype. As a start-up, this is a valuable opportunity. Working alongside one of the global leaders in breakthrough innovations means being able to reach new frontiers.
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ProSpace Analytics
Steve Ong
Founder
What’s unique about your business?
We deliver artificial intelligence-enabled workplace analytics and meeting room scheduling platforms to global enterprises, co-working space providers, architects and designers.
Our platform automates office space data collection, improves user productivity and uncovers opportunities to increase workspace return of investment.
What industry challenge did you pick?
We wanted to create a single unified platform where people could use thermal imaging to understand space usage. By using hotspots instead of the actual faces of people, we are able to address privacy concerns.
Businesses can then integrate the data into room sharing solutions to understand details like the indoor temperature and space requirements. For example, this data can then be integrated with the building management system to regulate the energy consumption within the building.
In addition, as privacy and security controls are very important for our clients, we wanted to create a platform that would not incorporate any video usage.
How has the IoT Challenge impacted your company?
It gave us access to the latest technology in the market like key components and know-how, which we could use to develop and enhance our products.
One of the biggest challenges we faced is sourcing for affordable components, and IPI has been a valuable partner in providing advice while helping us adopt best practices.
