Reeldata Enters Prestigious Accelerator Program

Halifax-based ReelData, whose software uses artificial\r\nintelligence to analyze video for the aquaculture industry, has entered the\r\nTechstars Montreal AI Accelerator. - Contributed

Halifax-based ReelData, whose software uses artificial\r\nintelligence to analyze video for the aquaculture industry, has entered the\r\nTechstars Montreal AI Accelerator.

Founders Matt Zimola and Hossein Salimian joined the latest\r\ncohort of the accelerator last week, immediately beginning one-on-one meetings\r\nwith the range of mentors brought in for the program.

ReelData uses artificial intelligence to collect and analyze\r\ndata for fish farms. Its software can analyze video from fish pens and produce\r\nmeaningful data on the weight distribution of fish stock and the progress of\r\ncertain diseases.

As a promising AI (artificial intelligence) company, it was\r\nable to enter the Techstars program in Montreal, which focuses on AI companies.\r\nAffiliated with Real Ventures, it is the third Techstars accelerator in Canada,\r\nand one of a network of Techstars programs around the world.

“Techstars itself is like this mentor-focused accelerator,\r\nand they’re one of the best in the world at it,” said Zimola in a phone\r\ninterview from Montreal.

Zimola and Salimian were graduate computer science students\r\nat Dalhousie University who wanted to start an AI venture, and their professor\r\nThomas Trappenburg suggested they consider an ocean venture. Soon they settled\r\non aquaculture as a target market.

Aquaculture companies have a problem in assessing the weight\r\ndistribution among the fish in their pens, and all the pens are equipped with\r\nunderwater video cameras. These operations need to know that a certain\r\npercentage of their fish meet a minimum weight requirement, and until now the\r\nonly way to do it was to get the fish out of the pen and weigh them.

Zimola and Salimian have developed what they call the\r\n“biomass” component of their technology, which applies artificial intelligence\r\nto produce data on the weight distribution of a fish stock just by analyzing\r\nvideo from the pen.

Working out of the Start-up Yard in Dartmouth and Volta in\r\nHalifax, ReelData now has paid pilot projects in Canada and the U.S., including\r\nwith a major company in a central state in the U.S. that operates an on-land\r\nfish farm — a growing segment of the aquaculture market. The founders are also\r\nin discussions with operators in Mexico, Denmark and Iceland.

Now they’re in Montreal and enrolled in one of the country’s\r\nleading accelerators. Zimola said the first few weeks are spent with as many as\r\neight meetings a day with mentors, during which they discuss problems specific\r\nto the company.

At the end of a few weeks, Zimola and Salimian will request\r\na single mentor to work with them during the remainder of the program.

One problem they’ve encountered so far is just making the AI\r\nexperts they’re meeting understand how big the aquaculture industry is and the\r\nopportunity it represents. The total value of the aquaculture industry is\r\nexpected to reach $242 billion by 2022, according to Allied Market Research.

ReelData now has three part-time staff, as well as the\r\nco-founders, and has an opening for a full-time developer. To finance the\r\nbusiness, it received $25,000 from Innovacorp’s Sprint competition, won a\r\n$25,000 equity investment from the Volta Cohort and is receiving a US$120,000\r\ninvestment from Techstars. Zimola said the company is planning to raise a round\r\nof funding in the spring.

He also said that once it emerges from Techstars, the priority\r\nwill be to sign major customers on to full subscriptions to the ReelData\r\ntechnology.

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“The next year or so, we will sign on international big\r\ncompanies on land and we want to sign on ocean customers as well,” he said.

Source : Compass