Web start-ups get set for final heat of Spark of Genius

BOXPAY, HIT the Road, Redeem Get, Vigill and Vocalytics are the five start-ups that have been shortlisted for the final of the €40,000-worth ESB Electric Ireland Spark of Genius competition.

The winning company will be announced at the Dublin Web Summit in the RDS next Friday.

Boxpay allows e-commerce transactions to be completed using a mobile phone rather than a credit card. Marketing manager Amanda Keating explains that users will not have to register as a pin code is texted to them when they complete the transaction. The service is available in 35 countries and Ms Keating says retailers in most of those countries are using the service. She says it is most suited to selling digital content.

A graduate of the National Digital Research Centre’s LaunchPad accelerator programme Hit the Road provides an interactive journey planner that shows the public transport connections between any two points on a map. While Hittheroad.ie focuses on Dublin, the co-founder says the company expects the UK to be its major market where the technology will be sold to transport providers to sell tickets from their own website.

Redeem Get helps merchants using daily deal offers to generate business to redeem those vouchers. Founded by Gene Murphy, Jade Alison O’Connor, and Adrian McMahon, it has been described as “Tweetdeck for daily deals” as it allows merchants to manage all their deals with one interface. Mr Murphy says 40 per cent of daily deal vouchers are redeemed between 7-11am on the first day they go live. “We stand in the doorway and help you handle that business,” he said.

Vigill is attempting to make smartphone apps more useful by enabling them to host “conversations” between companies and their customers. For example, a banking app could alert a user if their card is used overseas and ask them to confirm the transaction.

Barry Nolan, co-founder of Vigill, says the firm unlocks the utility contained in big businesses’ systems to power these conversations. Vigill is being beta-tested with international customers.

Founded by two former Google staff, Vocalytics is developing technology to help people use their voices more effectively – whether at a company presentation or dealing with an angry customer. Co-founder Benoit Curdy says mobile phones are the ideal way to do voice analysis. Vocalytics’s first product is Pace Recorder, an Android app which records your voice and advises if you are speaking too fast.

The five will pitch at the summit next Thursday and the judges, including venture capitalists Brian Caulfield of DFJ Esprit and Shay Garvey of Delta Partners, will announce the winner the next day.

Data Hug co-founder Connor Murphy, whose firm won last year, said it “changed everything for DataHug”.