4 million in external funding for KTH-startup Royal Schedule
A PhD student and a Master's student teamed up to start Royal Schedule. Now, they've secured SEK 4 million in external funding for their solution to automate scheduling, a time-consuming and often frustrating process for schedulers.
- We have for several years developed a mathematical model and algorithm to, within a few minutes, create a complete optimized schedule for an entire school, including students, teachers and classes. A process that today, for the majority of schools, is completely manual and often takes several weeks. We use large computer clusters to perform the complex calculations, says Emil Blomquist, Ph.D. student in theoretical physics at the Department of Physics at KTH.
Applicable in many sectors
The team behind Royal Schedule sees great opportunities for how the technology can be used in the future. Scheduling exists in many industries and the problem is not unique to the education sector. The technology will be applicable in home care, shift work and healthcare, just to name a few.
- We have been on the market for about a year and have received a fantastic response from the customers who use our product. We have gone from 100 to 5000 users. In addition, we have secured a collaboration agreement with one of Sweden's largest school platforms to distribute the solution together, says Nikolaos Kalkitsas, CEO of Royal Schedule and former KTH student with a degree in engineering physics.
The pre-incubator program was "incredibly valuable"
In September 2018, Royal Schedule was one of the 15 startup projects that were accepted into Batch 8 of the KTH Innovation pre-incubator program.
- We would never have come this far in such a relatively short time if it was not for KTH innovation. Coaching, support and, not least, the access to a common workplace has been incredibly valuable to us, Nikolaos continues.
Royal Schedule has now secured SEK 4 million in external funding for a continued expansion of the company.
- It is the next logical step. With our product, we have proven the need, and with the addition of capital, we are given the opportunity to further develop the concept in new markets and solve the problems involved with manual scheduling.