The firm has 25 staff and had revenues of €3 million last year
Gokhan Celik, chief executive and founder of A-techsyn in Shannon, Co Clare. Picture: Arthur Ellis
A-techsyn, a Clare-based drone business founded by Gökhan Çelik in 2016, aims to grow its revenue to €10 million this year.
The company, which has 25 staff and had revenue of €3 million last year, has developed an all-in-one drone business, from the software that powers them through to the physical device itself.
“There’s a lot of fuss about drones – unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is what we call them – but people usually think about the small ones. We are building five-metre wingspan aircraft that can take off vertically,” Çelik told the Business Post.
“We’re combining the power of vertical take-off and landing with the endurance of fixed-wing technology. The devices can fly for six hours and carry around 5kg of payload.”
The payload is anything that isn’t essential for flight but can be carried by the UAV. This could be a gimbal for a camera, sensors, radio frequency devices or even goods for delivery.
“We have carried loads across Greenland, from Nuuk to Kapisillit, which was over 100 kilometres. There are companies that do parts of the business, the design or the build or some integrations. We do all of it, we’re an end to end solution provider,” Çelik said.
“It has been a gradual process as we realised we needed to do each part because what was available wasn’t good enough for us. That’s how we pivoted into being an end-to-end solutions provider.”
A-techsyn serves a wide range of sectors. In the defence industry, it provides intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance services with its devices. It also provides services for cargo delivery, communications provision and academic research services.
“We are taking a lot of what is done with piloted aviation and bringing the costs down while also not putting a pilot in harm’s way,” said Çelik, who is originally from Trabzon in Turkey, and is excited about building the business out of Shannon to service the world.
“This is like the beginning of the industrial revolution, like the steam machine has just been invented and there are so many things to do. We’re finding new ways to use and create the market for it,” he said.
“That project in Greenland, we’re talking about places that can only be quickly accessed by air. The populations are small but they still need regular delivery of supplies. We’ve proved that it can be done with drones.”
A-techsyn is supported by Enterprise Ireland and Çelik said the agency had provided valuable help to the business.
“Having Enterprise Ireland’s support is important because it shows we have support from the state. There are a lot of drone projects in the world but not all of them provide what we do. When Enterprise Ireland comes in, it shows the project has been looked into and they support it,” he said.
“Being included in a network is important as well. In Ireland, everyone knows everyone, so as someone from another country it’s amazing to have them there connect me with people I can work with.”
A-techsyn has big targets for the future with plans to grow staff and revenue substantially in short order.
“We’ve just signed a contract for a project in Spain that means we already know we’ll match our revenue from last year. We will be aiming for €10 million revenue this year and we’re bidding for multiple tenders worth €20 million each,” Çelik said.
“The potential for growth is exponential. We want to be the tech centre of the world for drones. If we have the appropriate growth that we expect, we will need to grow to 86 staff in the next year. If we accelerate even faster, we could easily need 200 staff.”
This Making it Work article was produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland.
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