Bristol-based Ultrahaptics and Bath-based Sure Sense, Smart Antenna Technologies, EZ Education Ltd and Green Running are all startups set to pitch to an audience of investors and corporates at the Accelerating Growth event at The Shard this month.
Accelerating Growth is organised by SETsquared, a business incubation programme run by a partnership of the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey, and will see over 20 businesses exhibiting their wares.
Pitching at a new level
For the event the 22nd floor of the iconic London landmark will be turned into a real life Dragon’s Den as businesses providing technology solutions for everything from wrinkles to poor public transport in developing countries have just 10 minutes to pitch to the likes of Mercia Fund Management and Eden Ventures for a collective £30m of investment.
Tom Carter (pictured top right), co-founder of Ultrahaptics, will be meeting the investors to show off the startup’s unique technology which brings the sense of touch to gesture control, creating the magical experience of feeling without touching.
“Businesses within the SETSquared incubator have doubled the amount of funding they have raised in the last year”
The Bath-based startups all operate from the University of Bath Innovation Centre (UBIC), which provides work space, business support and inspiration for high-growth companies and the entrepreneurs that create them.
The ideas behind the four UBIC startups are:
Smart Antenna Technologies specialises in patented smart multiband antenna technology for portable devices and offers more functions but smaller size and lower cost.
The company has designed, developed and patented highly compact offering that replaces all existing antennas, including DVB-H, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GSM, GPS, 3G multi-bands and 4G LTE with just one.
You can read more about them in our full Smart Antenna Technologies profile.
Sure Sense is set to revolutionise the way commercial kitchens do business. It has created software and hardware systems that eliminate the need for outdated paper forms, saving caterers, hotels and other venues valuable time and money.
With a single premiership football stadium generating over 3000 paper forms on a match day which take three managers a full day to review, the benefits of the system are clear.
- You may like: Interview: Talking tech with Glenn Smith, CEO of MapleBird and Co-Director at Sure Sense
EZ Education Ltd is the inventor of DoodleMaths, the top-grossing primary maths app in the UK. The educational app not only engages children in maths, but is guaranteed to deliver measureable improvements.
The app differs from others on the market because it is adaptive, producing a work program tailored to each child.
Green Running has a revolutionary technology that, through monitoring a single point on the mains power line, is able to cheaply and accurately disaggregate the Power Load into which home appliances are consuming it through their unique power load signatures and report on how much they are costing.
The system even provides this data in Real Time through a slick tablet dashboard and phone app to the consumer and Energy companies, enabling both to drive further energy reduction and reduce costs.
11 years and counting!
2014 marks its 11th year of the showcase and the support of leading intellectual property firm Mathys & Squire has enabled Accelerating Growth to be held in the iconic Shard building.
Bristol SETsquared businesses have raised some £36m in investment in the last 12 months and Accelerating Growth aims to boost that figure by putting start-ups face-to-face with angel investors, venture capitalists, high net worth individuals and self-certified sophisticated investors.
Nick Sturge, Centre Director at the Bristol SETsquared Centre located in the iconic Engine Shed, said: “The fact that businesses within our incubator have doubled the amount of funding they have raised in the last year proves there is real appetite for investors and corporates to partner with high growth potential technology companies.”
“Each of the companies from Bath shows real innovative talent and I have no doubt that they will do an excellent job of pitching to the biggest and best investor”
Ali Hadavizadeh, Deputy Head of Enterprise and Innovation Centre at SETsquared’s innovation centre at the University of Bath, said: “Each of the companies from Bath shows real innovative talent and I have no doubt that they will do an excellent job of pitching to the biggest and best investors.”
To get a feel for what happens at Accelerating Growth events you can see a video about last year’s tech showcase below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtnz6vhS8UY
You can keep up to date on Accelerating Growth, SetSquared and UBIC on Twitter at @setsquared and @bath_innovation respectively. Why not keep up to date with us too, while you are about it! @techsparkuk
