Candelytics — Data Management For The 3D Revolution

Making complex 3D data useful, intelligent, and impactful.

The Problem

Despite being the best resourced maritime law enforcement agency in the world, the U.S. Coast Guard fails to stop 91% of illegally trafficked substances in the maritime domain. This is because current methods for finding hidden compartments on suspected smuggling vessels is highly manual, time consuming, and completely outdated. Currently, maritime interdiction operations rely on an inefficient process called “volumetrics,” which requires the Coast Guard boarding teams to painstakingly collect all interior measurements of a target vessel using tape measure, pen, and paper.

What The Company Does

With Candelytics, the Coast Guard would be able to reduce volumetrics time by up to 60% and potentially double the number of successful interdictions. Candelytics’ end-to-end solution accomplishes this by addressing three critical areas: 3D data collection, analytics, and knowledge management. First, by replacing manual measurements with cutting-edge mobile LIDAR scanning; second, by delivering faster insights via software-enabled differential analytics; and third, by optimizing interdiction operations across the fleet by sharing insights via a 3D data repository.

Market

Every year, more than $65B worth of illegal substances flow into the U.S. from the maritime domain. Drug interdiction operations represent the Coast Guard’s largest discretionary budgetary item, and each year the service spends over $1.7B on this priority mission.

Business Model

As an end-to-end 3D data solutions provider, Candelytics is able to leverage a diversified revenue model via hardware leases, SaaS subscriptions, and data management maintenance contracts.

Traction

Out of an original field of 24 startups, Candelytics was recently named the winner of the Defense Innovation Accelerator. The team is backed by MIT’s Sandbox Innovation Fund and was recently invited to speak at CES 2021. They have a demo with U.S. Coast Guard units in San Diego in just a few weeks.

Founding Team Background

Candelytics was co-founded by a team of military veterans, engineers, and graduate students from the Harvard-MIT ecosystem. Bryan Lee is a former Army Black Hawk helicopter pilot currently pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School. His private sector experience includes work in venture capital, private equity, technology, and consulting with Bain & Company. James Parker studied electrical engineering at BYU and is an MS/MBA student at Harvard Business School and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Prior to grad school, he designed wireless tech for the intelligence community and also has experience co-founding a proptech startup. Clark Yuan is a former Army intelligence officer now pursuing dual MPP/MBA degrees from the Harvard Kennedy School and MIT Sloan. He has private sector experience at Goldman Sachs and is continuing his service as a Reserve Innovation Officer with Army Futures Command.

What They Need Help With

Candelytics is looking to connect with investors with an interest in the defense-tech and national security innovation ecosystems. They’re also growing their technical team and have open roles in software engineering, computer science, data architecture, and artificial intelligence. Connect with the Candelytics team.

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