CML's Shanti Korporaal in The Australian
By : Shanti Korporaal /
Shanti Korporaal’s hands-on when it comes to tech business
The Australian
12:00AM August 3, 2017
There may be only a few hundred Australians who have been “chipped”, but local experts say embeddable implant technology is on the rise.
That’s the view of Shanti Korporaal, one of the co-founders of Chip My Life, a local Sydney business which imports the overseas technology and sells it to Australians interested in implanting microchips into their hands.
Ms Korporaal and her husband and business partner Skeeve Stevens — who became interested in the business after both getting implants — saw a hole in the market and started offering the technology.
“We got the chips and then we got more interested as to what you can do with it and what you can’t do with it. And how you implement it in to your life,’’ she said. “No one was doing anything about it in Australia.”
The two available chips are near-field communication (NFC) chips and radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, which can be programmed to open doors or gain entry to a building, as well as store basic personal data and contact information.
They are about the size of a grain of rice and are normally implanted by a doctor or medical professional in the webbing of the hand between the thumb and index finger.
The local appetite for the technology is slowly growing, Ms Korporaal said.
“Realistically it’s geeks and biohackers, people that know how to mess with NFC or RIFD technology,’’ she said.
But the opportunities were beginning to become apparent for employers.
“In terms of microchips, plenty of companies have started to use them. A few in Switzerland and the US have been public about it,’’ Ms Korporaal said.
“So if a company in Australia wanted to chip 100 employees we would just order more chips and we are trying to organise (the operation) to be at our space in the city. It’s one of those things we expect that to happen.”