Jordan Appleson is the 22-year-old chief executive behind Hark, a Leeds-based environmental monitoring platform, which is well on its way to becoming one of the region\u2019s fastest growing businesses.<\/p>\n
The Hark platform provides real-time data monitoring and analysis for a range of industries, from pharma and healthcare to smart buildings as well as factories, logistics and heavy industry.<\/p>\n
It has already received backing from high profile investors just over a year into the development of the company, which was incorporated in February 2016, with two new staff employed only recently in the form of business development director Shane Ellams, and software engineer Bradley Halstead.<\/p>\n
CEO Appleson has spearheaded the growth of the business, which started, as most good ideas do, over a schooner with now-chief commercial officer Ben Roylance, when he lived in Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cPharmaceutical companies have problems monitoring environments, so I said, we\u2019ll build and a platform to monitor sensor data. Then Hark was born.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing our hardware, we stream all the data up to our platform where users can see it and get real time alerts. The really clever bit is that we analyse this data and using predictive analytics, so we\u2019re able to tell before goes wrong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife science customers were our primary target, those that are developing new drugs, and need to stability test them for five years. We take the old track recorder out, then we put our box in it, all it requires is an internet connection.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gives our customers the ability to see data wherever they are, not going down physically to check data. They can log in from Australia if they want to and there are still full audit trails for the FDA approval process.\u201d<\/p>\n
The initial focus has been on pharmaceutical companies, with Andrew Hathaway and Julian Kay brought on to develop technology and software respectively.<\/p>\n
Now, the company is beginning to realise the full potential of its platform, and has gone from monitoring developmental drug environments, to the fridges and freezers of a major supermarket brand.<\/p>\n
The average age of the company, which employs four, is 25, but don\u2019t let it fool you. The team has already been awarded $120,000 in credit from Microsoft\u2019s Azure platform and has received backing from branded3 entrepreneurs. Hark have been accepted onto the Mi Idea program which is run by Manchester Science Park and Cisco Systems.<\/p>\n
Appleson received seed funding last June to enable the team to go full-time. First investors Vin Chinnaraja and Patrick Altoft, who made their money by selling digital company Branded3 for \u00a320m.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve build it and proven that it works,\u201d said Appleson. \u201cWe took a bit more money from the same investors, and there\u2019s options to do a big investment round to go global. We can target energy customers, supermarkets, not just pharma. The next thing I\u2019m interested in is smart buildings and smart cities, monitoring things like air pollution and traffic congestion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a customer base that is growing, and our goal is to shape Internet of Things for smart cities.\u201d Big goals, but also big talent behind them, should stand Hark in good stead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Backed by entrepreneurs who sold Branded3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":2008510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"coauthors":[96],"class_list":["post-2007533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news"],"yoast_head":"\n