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Halifax-based Motryx, which produces sensors that monitor the storage conditions of blood samples during transport, has been awarded a $97,500 grant from the federally funded Women Entrepreneurship Strategy.
CEO Franziska Broell, who holds a PhD in oceanography from Dalhousie University, said in an interview that the money will go toward integrating GPS support into the Motryx sensors by the end of this year—a feature that several laboratories have expressed interest in.
“It’s a key part of the solution that we need to develop in order to be able to access that big private lab market in the U.S.,” said Broell. “It’s going to be integral to [scaling the business].”
The Women Entrepreneurship Strategy is a $2 billion, federally funded program that aims to double the number of women-owned businesses in Canada by 2025. Businesses with female CEOs, more than 50 percent female ownership or more than 50 percent female employees are eligible for funding from the program. Motryx meets all three criteria.
“Our government believes that women’s economic empowerment is not just the right thing to do; it’s good for the bottom line,” said Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion Mary Ng in a press release. “It’s a smart investment with an economic and social return.”
Founded in 2014 as Maritime BioLoggers, Motryx originally intended to manufacture tracking tags for marine life. The company pivoted to monitoring blood samples in late 2018 because the marine trackers had to be customized for each new organism, which was going to make the business difficult to scale.
