Small Business Profile: Robert Ingino and Ali Raza Syed from SenseTech

During times of global pandemics and social change, there perhaps is no organization better suited to find solutions than a technology driven problem solver like SenseTech Solutions. Find out how they got started, how COVID-19 has impacted them, and what they’re doing about it.

How did you get your start? 

Our vision for SenseTech Solutions began with a direct problem statement from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) in the senior year of our founding team’s engineering program. CNIB were exploring how virtual reality technology can assist their community, and had a vision where rehabilitation and training services were available at each CNIB location.

Through the devotion of much of our time to the understanding of the accessibility field, and reimagining the implication of virtual reality simulations in an accessible serving community, our team designed our first award-winning product called Classroom Simulator. Classroom simulation is a virtual reality simulation particularly made to fulfill rehabilitation and training needs of children with sight loss entering a classroom environment for the first time. Being acknowledged for our success by the CNIB community at large and through the IDeA (Innovative Designs for Accessibility), our team has continued pioneering the future of this field within the accessibility communities.

How has your business adapted to the current COVID-19 environment and how has your customer reacted? 

COVID-19 and social distancing has given SenseTech Solutions new insights on future products and we are discussing them with our partners. SenseTech Solutions is partnering with select universities such as OCADU and Ontario Tech. We are collaborating on projects that directly assist the COVID-19 effort, where we offer our virtual reality software development expertise to solve these problems. With this rapid planning, and shift in priority due to the COVID-19 market, we are finding that we fit an active role in the categories of pandemic public awareness, and methods for maintaining the service of higher education. Within these opportunities, we use our root company values to make both accessible and widely available software simulations to the public. SenseTech Solutions has also proposed modifications to our customers about our current products to protect against COVID-19. The changes include changes with setup, testing procedure, and schedule. These proposed modifications are not replacing the original systems, and the proposed system will be made available in addition to the originally proposed system.

What’s your greatest struggle as a business owner right now? 

Many of our customers that we have been working with have temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 restrictions. This has resulted in many of our current contracts and future contracts being significantly postponed. As expected, this can have negative impacts on small business both in terms of motivation and monetarily.

Where do you think entrepreneurs should invest their time and money? 

We highly recommend that entrepreneurs invest their time and money into looking at new emerging technologies. Technology is a very fast-moving industry and our customers are always extremely impressed at how new technologies can help serve the communities they serve.

What keeps you inspired and working every day? 

We look forward to one day distributing our products to as many communities across North America. The thought that our products/services can positively impact communities serving the disabled keeps us inspired to work hard every day.

Get in touch with SenseTech Solutions through their website at sensetech.ca.