The Galway based software startup DigiTally was the star of the show at the recent NDRC at the Portershed showcase, securing €30,000 investment.
DigiTally, founded by Patrick McDermott and Artur Leonowicz, is a software platform that lets food businesses which work out of multiple locations streamline their management of resources.
By using a single tailored dashboard businesses can manage the sales cycle of fresh, perishable produce, which its creators intend to allow their customers to
DigiTally saw off competition from six other exciting businesses on the day, covering industries such as retail, healthcare, green energy and tourism.
“In this third accelerator programme at PorterShed, we saw the strongest cohort to date. Standards were very high,” said Ben Hurley, CEO of NDRC and one of the five investors acting as judges at the Investor Showcase.
“DigiTally was chosen for a number of reasons. It is very close to market, and it is very proximate to scaling.”
“It is ready for investment today, in that we can see the impact that immediate investment would have on the company.”
“It’s a product-driven business that can scale, and it operates in an area that has great scope for technological solutions to problems.”
“This latter point is made clear by the fact that DigiTally is already solving acute problems within the fresh produce industry.”
The other judges on the day were Enterprise Ireland’s Gillian Slattery, Niamh Sterling of HBAN, Sure Valley Ventures’ Barry Downes and Dermot Berkery, of Delta Partners.
Based in the PorterShed in Eyre Square, Galway, this initiative is a collaboration from Enterprise Ireland, NDRC and GCID (Galway City Innovation District) and aims to drive the growth of digital startups nationally.
Congratulations to DigiTally. We look forward to helping this exciting business grow to greater heights in the coming months and years,” said Maurice O’Gorman, GCID Chairman.
The NDRC at the PorterShed accelerator programme was set up with the help of Enterprise Ireland in 2017.
Since then a total of 22 companies have come through the accelerator programmes, with these early-stage businesses having already secured approximately €1 million in follow-on investment.
The previous businesses to win investor showcases in PorterShed were Appraisee, which provides digital appraisal software used by car dealerships, and PlanDomino, a productivity tool designed for the laboratory market.
image credit: Andrew Downes/Xposure
