Portfolio Insight: Meluta, The Silent Signal Processing R&D Partner

Our portfolio company Meluta offers “situational-awareness with sound”. For example, the Tampere based company has developed intelligent sensor solutions for recognizing snow build up on roofs during winter time, notiyfing users to act in time before any accidents occur. Usually customer solutions require complex acoustic and vibro-acoustic signal processing which can be applied in several business domains:

In addition to the collapsing rooftops, our expertise can help detect glass from breaking, help steer autonomic marine vessels, help with identifying abnormal heart activities, and even tackle the age-old problem of schools suffering from mold, explains Pauliina Peltola, Meluta’s business developer.

Technology with varying business solution applications

From the get go, Meluta’s operating model has been built as a service provider, acting as an intelligent solutions partner for its customers. As exemplified by the list above, it is engaged in projects within several different business domains. Heavy industry being the companies number one business segment, followed by the marine industry. Various high tech organizations such as ESA are also among Meluta’s customers.

Regardless of the customer, Meluta’s end product is typically either software, electromechanics, or a combination of these. Meluta’s early stage R&D work typically continues developing and commercializing from where universities and VTT leave off. The companies strong signal processing know-how is based on the teams years of experience working on Nokia’s and Microsoft’s product development. Following the tough year these giants had in 2014 including laying off their acoustic teams, Meluta’s founders decided to form the company.

Profitable business from the get-go

The founders wanted to create a dream workplace for themselves. They succeeded in that. There has been a clear market demand for Meluta’s solutions since the start. The company was founded only when the first invoice was to be sent to Ruukki Construction, our first customer, says Peltola with a laugh.

Each of the companies first four years have been profitable. In the beginning the founders did not seek any angel funding at all. In November Meluta raised 1 million euros funding as a part of Kasvu Open’s Investors Favourite award with Innovestor as the lead investor. At the moment Meluta employs 11 people, all based in Tampere. Despite this, internationalization has been clear for everyone from the start, with the main purpose of the funding round to accelerate growth and scale the business.

Going forward, Meluta is working towards productizing their know-how so that future projects would be less “human-intensive”. The goal is to enable various resellers to have Meluta’s solutions in their catalogs and offer them to their customers. One clear target for utilizing the raised funding is to build an international reseller network.

We often describe ourselves as being a silent R&D partner for our customers. We aim to make their products better and their operations safer, all this done quietly and under the hood. However, now we want to make ourselves more visible so that more potential customers will get to know who we are and what we do, Peltola sums up.

Meluta is a portfolio company in our Innovestor Kasvurahasto II Ky fund. See all our companies here.

Text by Santtu Toivonen

Picture by Kasvu Open