Myriota’s big plans for its smart blue box

AN Adelaide start-up that has developed satellite technology encapsulated within a low-cost, pocket-sized blue box, will aim to raise up to $20 million by the end of the year to launch its product globally.

Myriota CTO Dr David Haley and Myriota chief executive Dr Alex Grant.

AN Adelaide start-up that has developed satellite technology encapsulated within a low-cost, pocket-sized blue box, will aim to raise up to $20 million by the end of the year to launch its product globally.

Myriota, a spin-off of the University of South Australia’s Institute of Telecommunications Research, was established in late 2015 after attracting $2 million in seed funding from Canadian investor and commercial partner exactEarth. and $500,000 from other investors.

Co-founder Dr Alex Grant spoke at a space conference briefing in Adelaide recently, outlining future plans for the business that was set up to “solve a real and pressing problem” of providing access to data in remote areas.

“These are high-value small pieces of data that have real business operational importance in terms of efficiency, risk and increasing productivity.”

“Our technology allows short messages to be transmitted in very large numbers using tiny slivers of radio bandwidth (kilohertz) using very little power (milliwatts).”

Those messages are sent to low-orbit satellites, which are then received by land-based satellite stations where they are processed using cloud-based software.

These have been initially trialled on satellites in Australian and exactEarth’s portfolio of satellites in Canada and on Defence Science Technology Organisation aircraft around the country.

exactEarth, a current shareholder, may choose to invest further in the business during the next capital raising.

The small first-generation terminals, which will be used in trials across sectors at the end of the year, will cost around $50 each and have a battery life that can be measured in years and a connectivity cost of just $5 and heading south.

“We want to hit a disruptive price point when we hit the market in the second half of next year.”

“We don’t want to be in competition with satellite operators, but with cellular operators,” Mr Grant said.

“It’s less about the tens of million dollar things, and more about the hundreds of thousands of ten dollar things.”

“Our product is not bespoke, it’s mass volume.”

Myriota, which has a 10-patent portfolio, has attracted strong interest from the agriculture, oil and gas and marine sector players as well as for low-end asset tracking, environmental sensing work and water monitoring.

The Australian Institute of Marine Science is using it on drifters for research by its oceanographers, he said.

Myriota, which employs eight people in Adelaide, hopes to stay focused on solving problems and keeping its products simple to build a global market for its mass product.