Conversation 174: How can you have a faster better and cheaper product and not sell a s*@#t load of it? That was the question I asked Uzi Breier, CEO of Dotz Nano an Israeli based tech business back in July 2019. But today the anti-counterfeiting, authentication and tracing solutions business appears to have turned the commercial corner. They recently picked up a $13 million dollar, three-year deal that could, if all the planets align, be worth close to double that. Then there is the “instant COVID test” that is being clinically trialled at the moment.
With no other competitors enjoying the global reach of Envirosuite [ASX:EVS], the race is now on for the Australian environmental intelligence company to grab as much market share as it can according to their CEO. “It’s a bit like a land grab and we need to get as much as we can across the six continent,” Peter White told me recently. Envirosuite uses a mixture of clever and cutting edge monitoring, combined with AI and big data to create environmental intelligence covering air, water, noise and vibration for operators in airports, cities, construction, mining, heavy industry, waste and water.
Conversation 177: The next chapter in the Archer Materials story. Archer Materials CEO Mohammad Choucair is a smart cookie. Not only has he played a major role in the invention of breakthrough materials like synthetic graphene but he also gets the stock market. In the tech world, this combination of share market savvy and high level technical expertise is rare. Despite his “on-paper” nerdiness, he comes across more like an account executive at a global ad agency (that’s a compliment!), than the CEO of a company trying to disrupt quantum computing, energy storage and biosensor industries.
CEO Rob Bloomfield told me that there may be an issue around the group’s visibility and profile with investors. He believes some big contract wins could help in this regard. However, he says a company shift to more innovative use of Machine Learning and AI, applied to AVA’s 2.5k installed existing systems, along with a shift to licensing and partnering deals with local suppliers, is showing the way forward for the group. He cites a recent tender contract win with the Indian Army, to protect their fiber optic critical communications network as an example.
He also believes this approach will result in more recurring revenue and an opportunity for AVA to generate SaaS-type offerings based on learnings from ML and AI system updates.