http://www.intertradeireland.com/module.cfm/opt/25/area/News/page/News/id/324
Belfast company SOPHIA Search and Cocoon (Europe) Limited from Lisburn are the NI Regional Winners for Best High Growth Company and Best Emerging Company respectively and are now guaranteed to walk away from InterTradeIreland’s Seedcorn Competition with at least €25,000 each.
SOPHIA Search a software company and Cocoon which develops rapidly deployed large scale enclosures for the events, sports, military and humanitarian relief sectors will now go forward to the all-island finals in Dublin on November 26 where they are in with a chance to scoop one of two overall top prizes of €100,000.
SOPHIA Search was founded in 2007 by Drs David Patterson and Vladimir Dobrynin and won the NISP £25k award later that year. Based at the NI Science Park in Belfast and in St. Petersburg, Russia they have developed ground breaking semantic search technology which enables companies and organisations to intelligently search their ever increasing volumes of documents and unstructured information, whether it resides internally or external to the organisation.
The technology was jointly developed by scientists from the University of Ulster and the St Petersburg State University in Russia.
Managing Director Dr Patterson said: “We are delighted to have won the NI Seedcorn award. The Search & Discovery market is worth some $2bn annually and it grew by 18% last year. We believe that we are well placed to significantly grow the business into the USA in next 12 months.
“We look forward to the input of some of Ireland’s leading business experts in the next stage of the competition, as we sincerely believe we have a Global Technology here.
“Whilst the cash prize is always welcome, it is ultimately the exposure of winning Seedcorn NI that delivers companies at our stage of development the connections to both the right funding partners and leading entrepreneurs to ensure we are successful in exploiting the massive potential in SOPHIA.”
Cocoon was established by Michael Brady in 2007 and he attributes the idea for Cocoon as coming from standing at an outdoor concert getting rained upon, when he began to conceive the idea of a large enclosure that would cover an event space automatically and rapidly if necessary on the day of the event.
Commenting on the company’s success, he said: “We are overjoyed to have won this stage of the Seedcorn competition. We worked hard, with invaluable support from our company accountants Muldoon & Co, to tailor our business plan for the regional finals.
“This was reviewed by some of the country’s leading business experts, so our win is a great honour and fantastic validation of our business model as a whole.
“As a young company amid tough economic times, we have had moderate success in securing funding from the major banks especially with the Government backed Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme (EFG), so this accreditation couldn’t have come at a better time.”
Liam Nellis, chief executive of InterTradeIreland, the all-island business development body which runs Seedcorn, commented: “SOPHIA Search and Cocoon are very worthy regional winners and are great examples of global innovation and how hard work and perseverance pays off when establishing and growing a new company.
“Together with all the other regional winners, they will now have access to some of Ireland’s top investment experts who will advise them on how best to develop their business in the current economic climate and accelerate growth in preparation for the upturn.”
Acting Operations Manager Grainne Lennon said: "The InterTradeIreland all-island Seedcorn business competition recognises companies, no matter how small or young, with the best ideas and potential for commercial success across the island. SOPHIA Search and Cocoon are shining examples in this regard.”
SOPHIA Search and Cocoon (Europe) Limited will now join six other regional winners from Dublin, Connacht & Leinster, and Munster to vie for the all-island titles.