After a national call and an extensive application process, Allia Future Business Centres and its network of partners have selected twenty of the very best UK tech for good and social ventures for its new bespoke incubator.
Allia Future Business Centres, the home for social ventures and tech for good, recently held a launch event to announce the chosen ventures and give them an overview of the individual package of strategic support and practical business advice they will be able to access over the next 12-18 months.
Following an overwhelming response of applications, the successful chosen ventures are:
- COGZ: reducing food waste and creating a market for surplus food
- Playphysio: gaming solutions that transform children’s daily physiotherapy routines
- Appt: Boosting preventative healthcare across demographic divides, whilst reducing NHS cost
- Sutrue: the world’s first automated medical stitching devices reducing needlestick injury and saving hospitals time and money
- Banjo Robinson: Improving literacy for primary school children through engaging with letter writing from a magical cat
- Blue Tap: improves access to high quality drinking water in low resource settings
- Work for Good: enabling more charitable giving from SME businesses across the UK
- Maji: ensuring people have financial security and driving inclusion
- Greater Change: providing opportunities for homeless people through empathetic crowdfunding
- Disability Horizons: an online forum that aims to give disabled people a voice
- Twipes: Truly flushable and eco-friendly wet wipes
- Wearth: online shopping platform for all things eco and sustainable
- BEEN London: recycled bags and accessories reducing plastic and fashion industry waste
- Phycofeeds: generating solar bio oil and feedstocks from waste
- OceanMind: empowers enforcement and compliance to protect the world’s fisheries
- Seedlink: creating sustainable agricultural supply chains by connecting rural farmers to urban markets
- Padlock: addressing the future workforce requirement in cyber security by training lone parents and work returners with key skills
- NEMI Teas: ethical tea company providing employment to refugees with Fairtrade, biodegradable and plastic free products
- Camnexus: enhancing digital communications in key industrial and productive sectors with operations on developing countries, improving connectivity networks in remote areas
- Supply Change: a social supply chain connecting buyers to social enterprises
The aim of the programme is to support these 20 ventures with a no-cost, no-equity bespoke package tailored to their individual requirements, to help them refine their business models, scale and accelerate their success to create maximum impact.
At a buzzing launch event at Allia’s Cambridge Future Business Centre, all ventures met for the first time, receiving an overview of what the incubator will bring over the coming 12-18 months. They also had the opportunity to meet with some of the programme’s partners and advisors who will help Allia deliver the programme support. Each founder presented their venture in a bite-size pitch to introduce their solution and explain how it has the potential to create positive impact.
Rebecca Donaldson from BlueTap, a Cambridge-based social enterprise which provides 3D printed water purification technology for low resource settings, said “The Blue Tap team are all very excited to be part of the Future 20. We’re looking to scale up our operations internationally and are keen to find structure and support during the growth phase of our start-up journey.”
John Fidoe from Banjo Robinson, a magical cat who encourages letter writing by ‘cat mail’, said “As a start-up with an ambitious mission to increase literacy levels for children from all backgrounds, we want to immerse ourselves in an environment which will be supportive of that social mission and enable us to grow as fast as possible. We believe that being part of the Future 20 will be an important factor in creating that environment for us through mentoring, partners and our fellow cohort of social impact start-ups.”
Support will come from Allia and a network of partners from across the UK tech, innovation and professional service industries. This includes mentorship from select entrepreneurs and angel investors as well as introductions to funders and opportunities to raise capital, plus advice on product development, go-to-market roadmaps and access to testing sites, together with free workspace and prototyping facilities.
Caroline Hyde, CEO of Allia Future Business Centres, said “We were delighted to finally meet our Future 20! This new incubator isn’t about creating a structured programme, but fully understanding what each venture needs to move forward individually. We will work with our network of partners to access and leverage these requirements, building a bespoke package of support for each company. We are truly excited to see what we can achieve collaboratively over the next year.”
Some of the key partners on board to provide a range of support, resources and advice include: Barclays Eagle Labs, J P Morgan, Innovate UK, Stone King, AgeTech Accelerator, Agri-Tech East, Anglian Water, Aurora Cambridge, Cambridge Cleantech, Cambridge Wireless, Enterprise Europe Network, The EU Commission, The Health Foundry, Oxford Greentech, Triple Point, Water Innovation Network and the Wellcome Genome Campus.
Companies can choose to access workspace at one of Allia’s three Future Business Centres in east London, Cambridge or Peterborough or through its network of partner locations across the UK.
Further information on each venture can be found at https://futurebusinesscentre.co.uk/future-20