KORE Wireless ramps up Rochester-area operations

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KORE president and CEO Romil Bahl, center, cuts the ribbon at the official opening of the company’s 65,000-square-foot facility at 3750 Monroe Ave. in Pittsford. (Photos courtesy of KORE)

KORE Wireless expects its Pittsford facility to anchor its managed services unit. The Georgia-based business, which specializes in Internet of Things offerings, opened the $1.2 million facility last month.

KORE came to the area after its acquisition of Integron, an IoT company that focused on connected health care solutions. Its products collect health data, like heart-rate measurements, and send them to another device on a network to store or interpret the information.

Locally, KORE now has 120 employees, up from 80. It expects employment here to grow to 200 in the coming months. 

Late last year, the state announced that KORE had received $400,000 through the Excelsior Jobs Tax Credit Program in exchange for creating 52 new jobs over the next five years.

Previously, KORE operated at 35 Bermar Park in Rochester, but the company needed more space, so it relocated to the Pittsford facility. However, the company already is looking at additional expansion.

Romil Bahl

KORE president and CEO Romil Bahl says the business has hit capacity in the approximately 65,000-square-foot facility at 3750 Monroe Ave. The company plans to expand operations in line with its growth, adding 30,000 square feet through the integration of an adjacent building.

The Rochester Beacon spoke with Bahl to learn more about KORE and its decision to expand to the Rochester region.

ROCHESTER BEACON: For someone who may not understand what your company does, how would you explain it to them?

ROMIL BAHL: KORE is the largest independent IoT enabler in the world, as we like to say, the only “pure-play IoT provider.” Essentially, KORE helps enterprise customers to adopt Internet of Things technologies quickly, efficiently and at scale.

For example, a health care solutions organization creates a device that can automatically read glucose levels through the skin, completely replacing the need for finger pricks. It’s a revolutionary stride in diabetes support and management. But that device needs to be connected to the internet and paired with a handheld device. To ensure ease of customer use, those devices need to be configured to connect automatically when it’s taken out of the box by the patient and the data must be sent through gateways and hubs, to the cloud and back. That’s where KORE comes in.

At KORE, we like to use an iceberg as a visual. The tip of the iceberg, what is visible above the water’s surface, is what many view as the value of IoT. It’s those analytics and sensor readings that are the real ROI of IoT. But the 90 percent of the iceberg under the surface, (KORE) represents all the different components that need to work seamlessly, 100 percent of the time, so there are no interruptions to interfere with the tip of the iceberg.

ROCHESTER BEACON: Why specifically come to Rochester? It’s certainly not because of the business and tax structure in the state.

BAHL: KORE first came to New York when the company acquired Integron, an industry-leading IoT solutions and managed services provider with a focus on the connected health market, in 2019. Since 1985, Integron had an office in Rochester and has had a deep connection to the local area. With tenured employees who have worked at Integron for more than 30 years, Rochester has demonstrated its strong technology workforce. KORE has committed to additional hiring in the Rochester area because of the tremendous efforts of the community to attract and retain high technology companies and the rich talent pool available as a result of the area’s skilled workforce.

ROCHESTER BEACON: What goal does KORE have in mind as you relocate to Rochester?

BAHL: The new 65,000-plus square foot facility will expand KORE’s footprint and make IoT enablement operations simple to deploy, manage, and scale … through connectivity, solutions and analytics. KORE seeks to continue its growth in Rochester and become a center for connected health enablement, a key market for the U.S. health care system. Connected health is a growing IoT industry that connects patients to providers through handheld devices and hardware in remote patient monitoring solutions such as diabetes and chronic disease management, or mobile Personal Emergency Response Systems (mPERS) that support holistic safety and wellness care for loved ones in addition to decentralized clinical trials allowing for greater participant diversity and increased participant satisfaction and retention.

ROCHESTER BEACON: A year from now, what does KORE hope to accomplish in Rochester?

BAHL: KORE managed services is the heartbeat of our IoT services. We moved into this larger facility to be able to better serve the needs of our customers and the growing connected health industry among many others. Over the next year, we expect to see continued growth of these services and the expansion of this facility and its team as we address those needs for our customers.

Alex Schneider is a Rochester Beacon intern and a student at Rochester Institute of Technology.

The Beacon welcomes comments from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name.

One thought on “KORE Wireless ramps up Rochester-area operations

  1. Alex Schneider:

    The question is, who has and gets access to the jobs? For staters our high school dropouts lose out for obvious reasons. That,…that needs to be addressed. We need kids to graduate, which makes them marketable for those good jobs. We keep bypassing those who are left behind in the K-12 education journey. Those are missed opportunities. With an education SYSTEM change we could give those kids a chance in life. Wake up RCSD!

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