Economy
Three women shaping Halifax’s future economy
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Out-of-sight innovators
You may not see a storefront or a flyer for these businesses. Unless you need their services, you may never hear of them at all, but they’re leading Nova Scotia towards the top of Canada’s information and communication tech industries. These are three women-led, Halifax-based tech companies you should know about as they’re part of a cluster of startups attacking common business problems with innovative solutions.
The problem: How can I make the right financial decision for my small business?
The solver: Laurie Sinclair, CEO of Finazz
“It comes out of a passion to help grow our entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
– Laurie Sinclair
“I work all the time with entrepreneurs in many different capacities and I have learned that this is a big pain point for many,” Sinclair says of the financial decisions business owners face. “We built this very much in response to a need that I literally see every day with all the entrepreneurs that I work with. It comes out about a passion to help grow our entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
Finazz aims to take the mystery out of financial statements for small business owners, says co-founder and CEO Laurie Sinclair. (Co-founder Karen Lightstone is an accounting professor at Saint Mary’s University and they have a third partner who is an IT security specialist.)
The company’s cloud-based financial analysis software for small businesses takes financial statements uploaded to the online tool and a sophisticated algorithm analyzes the data and provides insights. The software examines the current month and also provides a month-to-month analysis to help guide decision making. The online tool is compatible with most accounting software, as well as Excel spreadsheets.
“Our market is entrepreneurs everywhere,” Sinclair says. In addition to targeting small business owners, she says the software is also ideal for bookkeepers and business consultants who work with entrepreneurs.
The problem: How can I find out what I need to know to guide my ocean research?
The solver: Christine Ward-Page, CEO of eOceans
“I would show up at docks anywhere in the world and people would say, ‘Oh, you’re sampling in the wrong location.’ But they’d tell me the locals had all the information.”
– Christine Ward-Page
“It’s a platform to speed up ocean science,” says eOceans company founder and CEO Christine Ward-Paige. “It’s for everyone who goes to sea.” Described as a marine-based hybrid between social networks Facebook and Strava, eOceans is developing an online platform for gathering ocean data, allowing users to log observations and track activities.
The mobile app is aimed at ocean explorers around the world, from a tourist on a whale watching trip to a scientist studying marine biology. It has a free version and a pro enterprise version, and the data collected can be either open- or closed-source as well as used by teams to collaborate.
After the data is logged, it can be analyzed, searched and filtered based on species, areas and issue. The real-time nature of the data provides insights that can help mitigate or adapt to ocean changes or recognize successful conservation efforts.
The eOceans platform has been chosen to be part of the U.S. Maritime Blue Innovation accelerator. Ward-Paige says she’ll be travelling to Seattle in April to live-demo the mobile app. During June, she says the startup aims to have 30 people in 30 countries using the app at once, to create the first global map of real-time ocean observations. Her goal is for eOceans to reach a billion observations in one day and one million analytics in a month.
The problem: How can I measure my energy company’s emissions?
The solver: Liz O’Connell, president of Arolytics
“These new regulations sparked tons of innovation.”
Liz O’Connell
The three founders of Arolytics were working out of St. Francis Xavier’s Flux Lab, a gas measurement research group, when new emissions regulations were announced for the energy sector. Oil and gas companies would have to reduce methane emissions by 45 per cent by 2025.
“Methane is really important because it’s a much more potent greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide,” says president and co-founder Liz O’Connell.
O’Connell says Arolytics’ online platform improves both the cost and efficiency of tracking emissions. The company has developed a cloud-based software that organizes and analyzes atmospheric emissions data from the energy sector. The startup aims to help oil and gas companies measure, track and understand their greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to the AROviz software, the company provides consulting and advice for designing emissions monitoring programs.
They now have offices in Calgary and Halifax and O’Connell says the software is ready for trials. Arolytics will be piloting the first version of the software with some energy companies. The startup is also consulting for some of the country’s largest oil and gas companies, helping them plan for the new regulations.
O’Connell says there are opportunities to expand to the rest of North America and to other sectors, like the pulp and paper industry and fossil fuel power generation.
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China’s world-beating electric vehicle industry, at the heart of growing trade tensions with the US and Europe, is set to receive a big boost from the government’s latest effort to accelerate growth.
That’s one takeaway from what Beijing has revealed about its plan for incentives that will encourage Chinese businesses and households to adopt cleaner technologies. It’s widely expected to be one of this year’s main stimulus programs, though question-marks remain — including how much the government will spend.
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German business sentiment improved to its highest level in a year — reinforcing recent signs that Europe’s largest economy is exiting two years of struggles.
An expectations gauge by the Ifo institute rose to 89.9. in April from a revised 87.7 the previous month. That exceeds the 88.9 median forecast in a Bloomberg survey. A measure of current conditions also advanced.
“Sentiment has improved at companies in Germany,” Ifo President Clemens Fuest said. “Companies were more satisfied with their current business. Their expectations also brightened. The economy is stabilizing, especially thanks to service providers.”
A stronger global economy and the prospect of looser monetary policy in the euro zone are helping drag Germany out of the malaise that set in following Russia’s attack on Ukraine. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said last week that the country may have “turned the corner,” while Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also expressed optimism, citing record employment and retreating inflation.
There’s been a particular shift in the data in recent weeks, with the Bundesbank now estimating that output rose in the first quarter, having only a month ago foreseen a contraction that would have ushered in a first recession since the pandemic.
Even so, the start of the year “didn’t go great,” according to Fuest.
“What we’re seeing at the moment confirms the forecasts, which are saying that growth will be weak in Germany, but at least it won’t be negative,” he told Bloomberg Television. “So this is the stabilization we expected. It’s not a complete recovery. But at least it’s a start.”
Monthly purchasing managers’ surveys for April brought more cheer this week as Germany returned to expansion for the first time since June 2023. Weak spots remain, however — notably in industry, which is still mired in a slump that’s being offset by a surge in services activity.
“We see an improving worldwide economy,” Fuest said. “But this doesn’t seem to reach German manufacturing, which is puzzling in a way.”
Germany, which was the only Group of Seven economy to shrink last year and has been weighing on the wider region, helped private-sector output in the 20-nation euro area strengthen this month, S&P Global said.
–With assistance from Joel Rinneby, Kristian Siedenburg and Francine Lacqua.
(Updates with more comments from Fuest starting in sixth paragraph.)
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When Moscow resident Zoya, 62, was planning a trip to Italy to visit her daughter last August, she saw the perfect opportunity to buy the Apple Watch she had long dreamed of owning.
Officially, Apple does not sell its products in Russia.
The California-based tech giant was one of the first companies to announce it would exit the country in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
But the week before her trip, Zoya made a surprise discovery while browsing Yandex.Market, one of several Russian answers to Amazon, where she regularly shops.
Not only was the Apple Watch available for sale on the website, it was cheaper than in Italy.
Zoya bought the watch without a moment’s delay.
The serial code on the watch that was delivered to her home confirmed that it was manufactured by Apple in 2022 and intended for sale in the United States.
“In the store, they explained to me that these are genuine Apple products entering Russia through parallel imports,” Zoya, who asked to be only referred to by her first name, told Al Jazeera.
“I thought it was much easier to buy online than searching for a store in an unfamiliar country.”
Nearly 1,400 companies, including many of the most internationally recognisable brands, have since February 2022 announced that they would cease or dial back their operations in Russia in protest of Moscow’s military aggression against Ukraine.
But two years after the invasion, many of these companies’ products are still widely sold in Russia, in many cases in violation of Western-led sanctions, a months-long investigation by Al Jazeera has found.
Aided by the Russian government’s legalisation of parallel imports, Russian businesses have established a network of alternative supply chains to import restricted goods through third countries.
The companies that make the products have been either unwilling or unable to clamp down on these unofficial distribution networks.
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