INSIGHTS / News

Where: 30 Euston Square, London, NW1

When: November 24 from 1pm to 5pm

Budding entrepreneurs who are developing high-growth potential technology companies, with products and services that will help people across the world, will be pitching for investment at SETsquared’s annual Accelerating Growth Investment Showcase in London this month.

22 of the UK’s most exciting start-ups, who have all received mentoring support from SETsquared, will be seeking financial backing ranging between £150k and £10m from an audience of more than 200 investors and corporates on 24 November.

The event is the 13^th showcase for SETsquared, an enterprise partnership between the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey, and the world’s number one university business incubator.

Among the businesses pitching for investment are:

• Inclusive Media Solutions – which has created EasyVideo, a platform that enables adults with learning disabilities to scan household items with any smart device to play a video of how to use it
• VRGo – which has created a wireless, hands-free, motion-controlled chair for use with virtual reality games, designed go fit into typical living spaces
• Red Skies Technology – which is helping to improve use of public transport in developing countries with its GPS-controlled payment system called YoSafari
• Kinderly – which has developed an app for childminders and nurseries to help reduce the amount of paperwork and time spent in adhering to a statutory government framework regulated by Ofsted

Other start-up businesses pitching at the event have developed technology in the sectors of energy, life sciences, fashion and beauty, healthcare and event management software.

Simon Bond, innovation director at SETsquared, said: “Our start-up businesses are poised to take up the challenge to pitch for a total of more than £25m worth of investment at this year’s Accelerating Growth Investment Showcase.

“There is a real appetite for investors to partner with SETsquared’s high-growth potential technology companies and this has created a real buzz around our event. We hope this positive outlook will result in a significant increase in the amount we have already helped our companies to raise, which last year hit a record of £90m in 12 months.”

As well as the 22 companies pitching, four companies from SETsquared’s award-winning ICURe programme will be exhibiting their tech start-ups. The ICURe programme offers university researchers with commercially promising ideas the opportunity to ‘get out of the lab’ and validate their ideas in the marketplace.

The companies exhibiting from the ICURe programme are:

• Entwine – which makes online dating smarter with emotion-based matching and machine learning
• TrueInvivo – which develops microsilica radiation detectors and dosimetry systems that make cancer radiotherapy treatments more accurate and effective
• Renovos – which provides orthopaedic regenerative medicine solutions
• Hydrogel cell encapsulation for hypothermic cell storage – which provides novel ambient temperature storage of live cells for short-term storage and transport, increasing the shelf-life of cells and cell-based products

Among the companies to receive funding from SETsquared’s investor showcase in 2015 is BioSystems Technology, a start-up utilising larvae as an alternative to testing on mammals and proving low cost, ethical solutions. The company secured £200k investment from private backers that were introduced at Accelerating Growth last November.

SETsquared company Thalamus Health also raised a considerable, undisclosed sum to develop and commercialise a selection of medical devices designed by founder and CEO Oliver Blackwell, following his attendance at the Accelerating Growth investment showcase.

Over the last 14 years SETsquared has helped more than 1,000 businesses raise over £1bn in investment, as well as contributing over £3.8bn in GVA (Gross Value Added) to the UK economy with £8.6bn GVA estimated over the next decade – figures that contributed to it being named by UBI Global as the top university business incubator in the world at the end of 2015.