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  • January 18, 2021
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The Startup Journey: Nikolaos Kalkitsas, Founder and CEO of Royal Schedule

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The Startup Journey: Nikolaos Kalkitsas, Founder and CEO of Royal Schedule

The Startup experience is different for everyone, from the industry you’re specialising in to the amount of funding you receive. But, if there’s one thing that unites all start-ups, it’s the absolute certainty that building something from nothing is incredibly difficult.

We reached out to Nikolaos Kalkitsas, Founder and CEO of Royal Schedule to discuss Royal Schedule’s journey.

Giving Teachers More Time to Teach

When Nikolaos’ Father, a teacher with a tight schedule to keep, would spend every summer manually creating schedules for his school in preparation for the new semester, Nikolaos knew something had to change. 

“It was a complex, time-consuming and frustrating process. And even with 15 years of experience it still took him over 100 hours to complete the task.”

Nikolaos, a skilled Data Analyst by trade, brought together his co-founders to solve this problem while still working full time jobs. 

“It was a much more difficult process than we initially thought (as always) but we kept at it. We started by working every weekend, later on during the evening on weekdays and eventually it took up most of our free time.”

After three years of work, Nikolaos and the team at Royal Schedule had created an algorithm that could not only solve the problem and create a working schedule but also create a much better schedule than could be done by even the most experienced schedulers. 

After a round of vigorous benchmarking, Royal Schedule has taken funding rounds by storm and in September 2018, were one of the 15 startup projects that were accepted into KTH Innovation’s pre-incubator program.

Those benchmarks, which tested the algorithm against multiple schedulers, proved that the algorithm is better in creating schedules that have:

o   A higher compliance with rules and regulations.

o   Shorter days and less unnecessary gaps.

o   Better resource-management.

Now setting their eyes to the future, Royal Schedule and Nikolaos are seeing applications of their tried and tested algorithm in a wide variety of settings.

“We see 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 sectors.”

Royal Schedule has now secured SEK 4 million in external funding for a continued expansion of the company.

I, for one, am very excited to follow Royal Schedule into the future of scheduling software. 

Contact us today.