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MBA Entrepreneurial Venture Award

Date: 30 Oct 2012

Dublin, October 22, 2012.  Ultan Technologies (www.ultantechnologies.com), a Dublin based start-up which develops software solutions for device and sensor management, has won the Association of MBAs (AMBA) 2012 Entrepreneurial Venture Award. The award was presented to company founder Cathal Brady, an MBA graduate from UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, at a gala award ceremony held in London. The award recognises entrepreneurship and innovation by MBA alumni and students who have recently founded successful businesses.

Speaking about winning the award, Cathal Brady, CEO and founder, Ultan Technologies, said, “Innovative, smart and new high calibre businesses from around the world were nominated these awards. To have won is testament to the hard work of the team at Ultan Technologies and indicates the continuing strength of Irish start-ups who can compete with companies from all around the world and win. We identified a growing need by utility companies to better manage their customers and bill more efficiently and we developed proprietary and bespoke software solutions for them. Our product is hosted in the cloud, which gives a huge amount of value for companies in terms of costs as they don’t need to invest in extra hardware or IT infrastructure and can scale up or down as needed without the need for additional investment.” He added, “I would like to thank the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School for nominating me for this award and I would like to thank the staff in the Business School and at NovaUCD who helped me prepare for this competition.”

Cathal graduated with a first class MBA from UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School in 2004. He founded Ultan Technologies in 2009. The company, a graduate from the Hothouse programme and an Enterprise Ireland HPSU client, currently employs 12 staff between its Dublin and Ukraine based offices. They plan to employ an additional 10 people over the coming two years as they expand their national and international customer base across the UK, US and Ireland. The company has a turnover of €450,000 with plans to grow that to €14 million within five years. Brady added that they recently won a new contract worth €300,000 over the next three years.

Professor Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, Dean, UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, said, “We congratulate Cathal and Ultan Technologies on their AMBA award win. It’s great to see graduates like Cathal combine their entrepreneurial vision and knowledge from their MBA to start new and successful enterprises. As one of a number of elite business schools in the world to hold the ‘triple crown’ of accreditation from the three international centres of business and academic excellence – EQUIS, AMBA and AACSB- we are committed to promoting and encouraging entrepreneurship among our MBA graduates. This award gives us an opportunity to shine a light on the creative business successes that result from quality business and management education.”