The Chino project has focussed on commercialising Chino.io our data privacy and compliance platform for digital health. The platform was originally developed working with the Vertical.vc accelerator. Following that, we received a Phase 1 SMEi award that allowed us to create a beta version of the platform and create a detailed business plan and strategy. As stated in Annex 1, the core objectives of this project were technological scaling up, preparing the company for full commercialisation and providing suitable management and human resources to ensure the success of the project.
Over the course of the project, we have met and exceeded all our core objectives. Specifically:
- The Chino.io platform is now at TRL9 and is built on a high-availability architecture. We have worked on ensuring its stability, improved the usability and have incorporated features to meet future customer needs.
- On the dissemination side, we have built an extremely strong brand for our business. We are now widely recognised as the European thought leaders for data privacy within the digital health space. Our CEO is regularly invited to participate in events as a speaker and panellist. Over the past year, we have also made key progress with SEO, and now rank on the first page of Google for many search terms. As a result, over 60,000 people have visited our website and some 10,000 of those have engaged with us in some fashion.
- On the commercial front, we have finalised our future business plan. This included verifying our product-market fit, refining our go-to-market strategy and creating a detailed product roadmap for the next 5 years. Additionally, we have started the process to secure the strategic investment necessary to scale up over the next 18 months. Following that, we will seek a significant 7 figure Series A investment round.
- During the project, we were able to significantly expand our team. We also developed a much better understanding of where we need to grow in future. Over the coming 6 months, we plan to make 6 strategic hires to expand the existing team and ensure we are well placed for a large Series A investment.
All of this was supported by advisors from the EC coaching scheme and our own lean startup advisory board.