- Company Name: Sinergise
- Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia
- Age of business: 8 years
- Team: Grega Milcinski, Matej Aleksandrov, Matej Batic, Sabina Dolenc, Miha Kadunc, Primoz Kolaric, Rok Mocnik, Marko Repse, Bojan Sernek, Blaz Sovdat, Marko Trebizan
- ODINE funding: €100,000
What does Sinergise do?
Sinergise is mostly known for its Sentinel Hub, a Copernicus award-winning service for processing satellite data. Users can find data from around the world, ranging from as recent as a few hours to decades old, making it possible to monitor changes in the environment, assess the state of crops or just observe the beauty of our planet.
Sinergise has also been working in the geospatial sector for several years, mostly focusing on governmental solutions in support of agriculture and land administration.
How did you meet?
The team has been around for a while, originating at Cosylab, a company which builds control systems for particle accelerators. At Cosylab we learned a few tricks on how to handle data quickly and decided to apply this to the geospatial world.
Where did the business idea come from?
New images of the world are captured daily. However, when trying to use this data in a real-world situation with a client in Ghana, we were frustrated with how complicated, time consuming and costly it was. We learned that we weren’t the only ones having these problems. We decided to try to make it easier and once our solution was ready, Sentinel Hub was born.
Are you working with any other partners?
The most important ones are Copernicus, ESA and Amazon – the first two provide the majority of data, which we share, and Amazon Web Services is providing infrastructure. We also work with many other partners including NASA, Planet and Airbus.
How has ODINE helped you so far
We had our very first prototype running when we were applying for ODINE, but we had no idea whether the concept would work. ODINE pushed us to write it down and they provided the first external affirmation of Sentinel Hub’s mission goals. The funding from ODINE made it possible to support several team members to work on the project.
What advice would you give to other companies pitching to ODINE?
Try to find an answer to the question: why would we buy free data? If you are able to justify the added value you are bringing, you are on the right path.
How would you encourage big business to buy into the open data movement?
The wealth and quality of open data has changed drastically over the last few years. It is simply a must to exploit it as it can significantly increase the value of services.
What’s the key trend in open data at the moment?
The amount of open data, especially in terms of earth observation, seems to be increasing so fast that it’s impossible to store and process everything. Applications and systems therefore need to adapt so that they only process what someone needs at a particular point in time.
As seen on the Guardian website.
