The European Business Awards (EBA) has come up with a new initiative dubbed ‘They Could Be Giants’ to put the spotlight on early stage companies that could have the scope to be ones to watch in the future in their various business fields. And two Irish start-ups – DataHug and GBR (Global Business Register) – have made it onto the first iteration of the list.
According to the GBR, it has hand-picked the initial start-ups for the ‘They Could Be Giants’ initiative based on the insights from its researchers and judges.
The online listing is to give early stage companies with what the EBA sees as having “big potential” the visibility and endorsement to help accelerate their journey.
The EBA will be adding to this list of companies twice yearly, and published online.
Following that, a team of experts will track and report on the progress of the chosen start-ups over a two-year period.
“During this time we hope these businesses will fulfill their potential. For those who don’t, we will analyse the reasons why,” the EBA states on its website.
So here is some more detail on the two Irish start-ups that have made the EBA grade as start-ups to watch:
First off, DataHug is a customer relationship management (CRM) tech start-up that mines communications data within a company. Think email to social media, phone calls, text messages.
It aims to give a company a greater sense of the relationships it has with existing customers and can have with future customers. Corkman Connor Murphy founded DataHug in 2010.
Earlier this year, DataHug received a fresh investment injection from Salesforce.com. Existing investors at the time included Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway Draper Fisher Jurvetson, DFJ Esprit and Oyster Capital.
At the time of the announcement, DataHug was setting up its US headquarters in San Jose, California.
GBR, meanwhile, is a software start-up that was set up in Waterford in 2007. It was founded by Ben Cronin, a Waterford Institute of Technology graduate in business studies, and Robert Leslie, a graduate in electronic engineering from Dublin City University.
The duo set up GBR with the aim of making it safer for people to do business on the internet by identifying the party a firm is dealing with on the other end of a transaction.
At the minute, GBR provides a gateway to official, live data on more than 55m companies across the EU and the US, and in more than 20 different languages.
In July, it was one of eight Irish start-ups that showcased applications, technology tools and cloud-based services at Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Houston, Texas.
European business taking on the world image via Shuterstock
