INSIGHTS / Blog

We’ve already hit that point in January where any personal New Year’s resolutions that were optimistically made on 1 January are out of the window. With ambitious exercise plans shelved until the Spring, we turn our attention to business goals and growth.

What projects will form part of your R&D Strategy this year? What funding and partners do you need to support these?

Grant funding is an excellent choice for start-ups as its non-diluted, enabling you to keep as much equity in the business as possible, and there are plenty of opportunities out there. So if you have a strong R&D proposition, we can support your bid to enhance your chances of success.

The type of support on offer varies depending on your needs but can include identifying the academic expertise needed to undertake your R&D project from across our six university partners, acting as a ‘critical friend’ to review your bid, identify gaps and suggest improvements and in some cases, we can provide professional bid writing support.

We’re currently supporting funding calls in the following areas:

Defence & security
We’re currently supporting companies to bid for the Defence and Security Accelerator’s (DASA) open calls – which are looking to support innovations which will improve the defence and security of the UK across different technology readiness levels – emerging innovations through to prototype. Find out more here

Healthcare
We’ve just added the Biomedical Catalyst 2023 to the list of calls we’re supporting in health. This will support pre-market R&D projects in disease prevention and management, earlier detection of diseases, treatments that change the underlying disease or offer a cure, transform healthcare delivery or the development of digital technologies. Find out more here

Advanced Engineering & Manufacturing
The Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) has just opened its ‘Industrialising Net-Zero Automotive Technology’ funding call. The competition aims to support collaborative R&D projects that design, develop and manufacture technology that will work towards delivery of net-zero carbon emissions on-vehicle technologies for on-road or off-road vehicles. Find out more here

Sustainable Innovation
We’re supporting a range of calls which focus on food production and farming. One to highlight is the Innovate UK ‘Better Food for All: innovation for improved nutrition’, which is funding projects with the potential to impact the nutritional quality of food and drink products consumed by the UK population. Find out more here

It was great to see Scale-Up member Chassis Autonomy closing off 2022 with a major funding win. They were selected from more than 1,000 European start-ups to receive a share of €470m in the form of grants and equity investment from the European Innovation Council. They are a rising star of the Scale-Up Programme, on the cusp of major growth, and I look forward to seeing what they will achieve this year in developing their steering and braking systems for autonomous vehicles.

If you’ve got an R&D project that you are looking to get funded, get in touch, and we can discuss how to take it forward  – drop me a line at [email protected]