Industrial conglomerate Honeywell International snapped up the rights to produce, advertise and sell Long Beach-based Dimer's anti-viral UV-C light machine, the GermFalcon, in a licensing partnership agreement announced on Wednesday.
Created by Elliot Kreitenberg and his father, orthopedic surgeon Arthur Kreitnberg, in their garage seven years ago, the GermFalcon can sanitize a midsize airplane cabin full of germs in about 10 minutes and is being billed as an antidote in the age of COVID-19.
The GermFalcon will be renamed the Honeywell UV Cabin System.
"This offering is a big win for our airline customers, which are seeking affordable ways to clean their cabins effectively and quickly between flights," said Mike Madsen, Honeywell Aerospace president and chief executive. "Honeywell is working on a range of solutions to help make passengers more comfortable about flying."
Courtesy of GermFalconHoneywell, a major supplier to Airbus and Boeing among others, is in discussions with several major airlines and service providers for the cabin system. The company has been hurt by the grounding of Boeing's 737 and further struck by plummeting airplane passenger traffic.
Honeywell is accepting orders and expects the first shipments in July. Pricing will vary, but Honeywell estimates that for midsize to large airlines with hundreds or more aircraft, the cost will break down to about $10 per use.
The North Carolina company has been bolstering their offerings of products aimed at making flying safer for passengers loathe to go in confined spaces where a virus might easily spread.
The size of a drink cart, Kreitenberg sees the GermFalcon as the antidote to the spread of viruses.
"Airlines play a direct role in the way that disease spreads around the world," Elliot Kreitenberg told dot.LA last month. "We see that here with coronavirus. It flew here on airplane."
Dimer is also continuing to further commercialize and deploy its germicidal UV technology platform known as UVHammer for healthcare. The UVHammer product will target public transportation, education, hospitality, buildings, theaters, arenas and small businesses alike. It's expected to be brought to market in July.
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Voyage cut eight people from its roughly 60-person workforce last week, co-founder and CEO Rev Reddy confirmed to dot.LA. Besides COO Dave Link, the cuts affected the company’s full-time sales department and some contractors, he said.
“It’s unfortunate to let people go—it’s never a fun thing,” Reddy said. “This is a multi-factor decision, but of course the macro[economic] climate affected [and] was an input in this decision.”
Reddy added that the company hopes the downsizing will be temporary and that Voyage plans to eventually hire more staff, specifically people in the Los Angeles area who have expertise in digital marketing. “We are prioritizing growth efficiency over growth at all costs,” he said.
Voyage CEO Rev Reddy.Credit: Voyage SMSThe ongoing economic downturn has not spared the tech and venture capital sectors, spooking investors into pulling back funding and prompting a wave oflayoffs acrossthe industry. It’s a sudden change of winds of Voyage, which earlier this year raised a $10 million funding round and acquired rival SMS marketing startup LiveRecover. Voyage’s text-based marketing strategy is plugged into ecommerce platforms such as Shopify and ZenDesk—but as consumers have cut their discretionary spending to cope with rising inflation, they’re spending less on ecommerce, indirectly hindering Voyage’s business.
Link, Voyage’s outgoing COO, previously worked for LiveRecover and joined the company in February after the acquisition.
“Technically, [Link] wasn’t even an employee—it was a trial,” Reddy noted. “The title was internal and it was very much contingent upon execution of results. And candidly speaking, those results were just not hit.”
Link could not immediately be reached for comment. Other former Voyage employees confirmed on LinkedIn that they were laid off and looking for new work.
While Voyage is not yet profitable, Reddy said he believes the company is on a “path to profitability in a reasonable timeframe.” Still, he acknowledged that the startup’s backers—which include former Airbnb executive James Beshara and venture firms RiverPark and Guild Capital—will be eager to see progress if Voyage is to “attract the capital we need” moving forward.
“Limited partners now look at their portfolio and their allocations, and since the public markets have dropped so much, they look overweight in venture,” York IE managing partner Joe Raczka, whose New Hampshire-based investment firm is among Voyage’s investors, told dot.LA. “So they course-correct a little bit in terms of where their allocations are going, so you see some hesitancy.”
York IE Managing Partner Joe Raczka.
Credit: York IEStill, Raczka said York IE plans to stick with Voyage. “I think the company has a massive market that they play in [and] they have a really strong product,” he said. “I remain very confident in the business.”
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