Lee Suckling talks strategy with Telemetry Research, one of New Zealand’s fastest growing companies.
Photographs by Isaac de Reus

IN the beginning, staff would symbolically mark every product sale with a pin placed in a map of the world. But eventually, as sales and company growth ballooned, the efficiency of the map system was somewhat diminished: certain countries started getting a bit crowded – the US in particular – and then staff started swiping the pins.

Telemetry Research’s small team of 12 staff, its compact offices at the University of Auckland and its academic beginnings contrast with what it has achieved since it first started doing business in 2004.

The company has had sales throughout the US, Europe, Australia, Asia and South America, and recorded a revenue increase of 403 per cent from 2008 to 2010.

The global market for telemetry technology in animal research – wireless devices implanted into lab animals to monitor vital stats like blood pressure and brain signals for research – is effectively a two-horse race between Auckland-based Telemetry Research and Minnesota-based Data Sciences International (DSI).

DSI is over eight times its Kiwi competitor’s size, over 12,000 kilometres away and has been in business for an extra 20 years.

Unfazed, Telemetry Research co-founder Simon Malpas says innovation in the form of a key technological point of difference has allowed his company to not just enter the global market, but to help expand it.

That key point of difference is the fact that their products’ batteries can be recharged while still inside the animal by placing it on a re-charging pad. DSI’s offerings use a non-rechargeable battery which must be sent away for refurbishment.

“In cutting that step out, we’re reducing both the cost and time of undertaking research,” Malpas says.

The technology is used in a variety of research areas, including cardiovascular disease and heart failure. Because telemetry technology is wireless it eliminates the use of tethers in animals, facilitating stress- free, long-term monitoring.

Explaining the company’s growth and its stability within a duopoly, Malpas emphasises the importance of Telemetry Research’s international partnerships with data acquisitions systems provider ADInstruments and medical technology company Millar Instruments, both of which are renowned in the life sciences industry and have the resources of 120-150 staff each.

Owing to these joint efforts and partners, Telemetry Research has sold to over 30 countries. Malpas estimates his company currently holds “less than 5 per cent” of the market share but that is growing every year.

“We don’t differentiate on price – there’s no point in a two-player market,” he says.

“We differentiate ourselves by offering a technologically different product and committed customer support. Big companies like our competitor often have to ‘tell’ a customer what its product is; the customer is presented with a final piece of technology and left to take it or leave it.

“With a smaller company like ours, however, we’re able to work alongside the customer to under- stand their problems, and develop a solution with them.”

It is this smart partnering, and readiness to “get closer to the customer offshore, get that customer intimacy and empathy for customers” that national head of the Deloitte Fast 50 programme Matt McKendry says has helped Telemetry Research rank in their list of New Zealand’s 50 fastest growing companies for the last two years running.

Telemetry Research was also ranked in both 2009 and 2010 as one of the Deloitte Asia Pacific Technology Fast 500 companies.

“To be really close to the customer, that whole customer intimacy, that’s almost the point where you can reduce the risk of innovation, because you are, dare I say it, co-creating and then you can go, ‘what are the other iterations?’” McKendry says.

At which point he says companies should take what they know and “run like the clappers”.

Sometimes innovation comes in the form of great leaps forward. More often though, it is incremental improvement.

“Like many businesses, we began with a very niche product and went on to realise that the experience it gave could be applied outside of its initial use,” Malpas says.

The initial concept grew when he enlisted the help of colleague David Budgett to help design a telemetry system for his research because what he wanted wasn’t available.

Discovering the next commercial iteration of their idea involves progression between two kingdoms: animal and human.

“While our products have been animal-specific in their settings, our concepts expand for human monitoring purposes as well,” Malpas says.

“We’re currently working with other companies to expand this – but as you can imagine, human research involves a lot more protocol than animal research.”

The most important thing to lead a start-up to success, as Malpas and partners have with Telemetry Research, is to invest in research and development and “good people” early on, for the benefits they will yield later.

“We don’t come from a business or finance background, we come from a technology background, and we know the worst thing to do would be to constrain our staff. They need to be able to share and develop ideas at many different levels – that’s when technology can become commercially feasible.”