Hundreds gathered at the Aviva Stadium yesterday to look back at Enterprise Ireland’s year supporting Irish start-ups.
Enterprise Ireland (EI) has supported hundreds of up and coming start-ups over the years. And 2024 was no different, with the economic development agency providing 157 high potential and pre-seed businesses with nearly €30m in support. Moving on, it wants to do even more, it announced.
While dozens of businesses received investment through EI’s High Potential Start-Up and Pre-Seed Start Fund programmes, yesterday (7 May), two pre-spin-out ventures took home something extra – a special award recognising their nascent business’ potential to grow.
After battling out other pre-spin-out ventures emerging from EI’s Commercialisation Fund in a pitching competition, Dr Patrick Cronin received the Big Ideas award for his business, Oscil.
Oscil is a deep-tech start-up based at the University of Limerick (UL) which targets the pharmaceutical and dairy sector.
Speaking to SiliconRepublic.com, Cronin explained that Oscil provides real-time data analytics for powder manufacturing, addressing the issues in the production process and the end product’s overall performance.
This improves how baby formulas are produced, he added. As part of the Big Ideas award, Cronin and his team will travel to the US to participate in UC Berkeley’s Venture Connectivity Program.
“It’s exciting to get that validation – to be judged by people that I know that are on the panel there that have expertise and experience of working at this stage with companies,” Cronin said. Being viewed as “high potential” is great, he quipped.
Meanwhile, Tango – a fellow UL near-spin-out – received the Big Ideas runner-up award. Tara Dalton, the start-up’s founder told SiliconRepublic.com that Tango has built an instrument that measures T-cell function.
The start-up has invented a new method using microfluids – Dalton’s expertise – to automate the process that analyses a person’s adaptive immune system.
“I was not expecting this,” she said, commenting on the award to SiliconRepublic.com. “We’ve only been working on this for about two years with the help of Enterprise Ireland.
“We’re really excited to commercialise,” she added.
Other start-ups, such as IntegrityIQ and Contenseo from Trinity College Dublin and StarMAT from Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland also took part in the competition.
“The Big Ideas pitching element and awards at Start-Up Day provides a platform to showcase Enterprise Ireland’s commercialisation funded research approaching start-up status, with significant potential for success,” said Michael Carey, chair of Enterprise Ireland, who presented the award.
“The event also highlights the accomplishments of our national technology transfer system, the high calibre of research commercialisation activity within Ireland, and the significant impact these companies will have to help solve huge global challenges.”
Carol Gibbons, the head of entrepreneurship, regions and local enterprise at Enterprise Ireland told SiliconRepublic.com that the agency’s new ambitious strategy to launch 1,000 start-ups by 2029 cannot be achieved alone.
“We can’t do it on our own,” she said. “We never would, and we never could.
“In order to achieve its goals, EI is partnering with investors, third-level organisations and multinationals,” she explained. To signify this, the agency picked up its new ethos “le chéile“, which means “together” in Irish.
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
