From left: David Tighe, head of innovation, Bank of Ireland; Andreea Wade, CEO and co-founder of Opening.io; and Ben Hurley, CEO of NDRC. Image: Shane O’Neill Photography.
Opening.io, a recruitment start-up using AI and machine learning, has won €30,000 in investment at the NDRC Investor Day for spring 2017.
It has been a busy few months for Opening.io, a company founded in 2015 by two Romanian entrepreneurs – Andreea Wade and Adrian Mihai – who have made Ireland their home.
Recently featured as Siliconrepublic.com’s Start-up of the Week, its AI platform aims to narrow down candidate pools based on role-specific criteria.
Opening.io also uses data science to help recruiters sharpen their game and not overlook important CVs or opportunities.
Now, Opening.io is celebrating the news that it has been named the winner at today’s (31 May) NDRC Investor Day, where nine companies pitched to a panel of investors.
The Dublin start-up will receive €30,000 in follow-on investment to expand its technology.
Some of the other competing companies work in technologies ranging from audio technology developments, to self-cleaning cameras for the mining industry.
The panel of judges included Ben Hurley, CEO of NDRC; Nicola McClafferty of Draper Esprit; Debbie Rennick of ACT Venture Capital; and David Bowles of Delta Partners.
‘Extremely bright future’
Speaking of Opening.io’s success, Hurley said the company had an “extremely bright future”.
“It’s clear from the quality of all the propositions here today that there is a vibrant entrepreneurial culture in Ireland, where we see a pipeline of high-potential companies and continuously strong investor interest in NDRC’s portfolio.
“Opening.io has a compelling proposition, clear target market with existing customers, and refined commercial projections,” he said.
Supporting the NDRC was Bank of Ireland, whose head of innovation and recent speaker at the launch of Inspirefest 2017, David Tighe, welcomed the event.
“[NDRC] have a world-class approach to translating digital ideas into promising new ventures with a global outlook,” he said.
“Bank of Ireland continues to support start-ups across Ireland, helping them start, scale and succeed through our range of supports such as workbenches, StartLab and, most recently, our New York StartLab initiative.”
The other eight companies pitching at the event included:
- Sonarc – Offers a new type of audio speaker based on plasma technology, which produces a clear sound with no moving parts.
- AimSteady – Develops a wearable training aid for shooting handguns, providing immediate feedback in order to improve accuracy and performance.
- AddJust – Simplifies the management of change orders in a construction contract by providing technology that streamlines the process of recording, assessing and approving order changes.
- Transportzone – Helps transport companies to bring order and clarity to their subcontractor booking process.
- Happy Marketing & Media/Buymedia.ie – Helps advertisers to achieve a better advertising return on investment by matching their campaign criteria with the best fit advertising solution.
- DocumentationHQ – A central repository for all your know-your-customer information, aligning corporate, financial institution and professional services documentation obligations into a single, up-to-date version.
- Clearvue – A self-cleaning camera and accident video management platform for the construction and mining industry.
- LiquidEdge – Enables powerful, highly targeted, real-time and programmatic customer engagement by leveraging hidden data from Wi-Fi, social media and other systems.
