Our Investments

Algaecytes Limited

AlgaeCytes, with its patented and proprietary technology, is a company specialising in the production of high-quality EPA oils. EPA and DHA are the main oils in the Omega 3 sector, derived from freshwater algae.

AlgaeCytes grows microalgae in enclosed photobioreactors to make consistently high potency, traceable, Non-GMO, vegetarian, and sustainable ingredients primarily for premium priced products. The Company intends to target the rapidly growing personal care, healthcare and nutra-therapeutics markets.

Omega 3 oils are increasingly in high demand within a multitude of sectors including healthcare, food and drink, sports, cosmetics, personal and the oral care industries, due to its many health-promoting qualities. The human body cannot naturally produce omega 3 oils and so is traditionally sourced from wild-catch deep sea fish, other marine animals, algae and vegetables (including flaxseed).

AlgaeCytes’ primary product is the omega 3 EPA oils. EPA oils are recognised to enhance heart, cardiovascular, neuro and skin health, and lessen inflammation. Other products produced by the Company include beta-carotene (vitamin A source) and an agricultural crop bio-stimulant from algae.

Allergy Free Restaurants Limited

Allergy Free Restaurants Limited is intending to develop a mobile app that allows users to select restaurant chains and dishes based upon their individual dietary requirements. Whilst creating a channel for enlightened restaurant chains to reach out to this underserved and untapped audience. 

Aquarate Limited

It is the intention of Aquarate Ltd to develop an automated software solution which aims to help improve the accuracy of fluid balance monitoring. Fluid balance is a medical term used to describe the balance of the input and output of fluids in the body to allow metabolic processes to function correctly.  Patients requiring fluid balance monitoring may include those who show signs of fluid imbalance, critical care patients and post-surgery individuals.

arbnco Limited

arbnco is a technology innovator operating in the field of real estate energy efficiency analysis and improvement modelling. The Company has developed proprietary software that facilitates in-depth analysis of property energy consumption, along with recommendations for improving energy efficiency for commercial real estate (‘CRE’) of all kinds. arbnco’s offerings ensures that its clients meet the regulatory energy efficiency requirements across a number of jurisdictions to bring them in line with legal prerequisites, whilst simultaneously helping landlords achieve maximum leasing yields. The solution is cost-effective and can plan retrofits of commercial space without the need to evict clients.

Governments around the world face mounting pressure to tackle global climate change and it is now a legal imperative to manage and mitigate this threat. De-carbonising the sector will be vital if statutory targets are to be met. The identification of energy saving retrofit measures of existing buildings has been perceived as the most viable and quickest solution to meet these vitally important targets. Active across multiple sectors, arbnco offers a suite of solutions for this global challenge. Its software enables CRE owners and asset managers to take positive steps towards improving the energy performance of their estate holdings, whilst maintaining a healthy and productive indoor environment.

Arterius Limited

Arterius Ltd is engaged in the development of an innovative polymer-based bioresorbable scaffold (BRS), more commonly known as a ‘stent’. The bioresorbable attribute aims to allow the stent to dissolve over time, before being absorbed by the body. Therefore, this will mean that there is no requirement to physically remove the stent. We believe that the Company’s solution offers an opportunity to minimise the frequency of surgery or medical interventions and could give patients a better post-operative quality of life.

Audiology Metrics Limited

Cerneretec Limited

By providing a rapid, reliable and objective dose history, the Company hopes to improve efficiency when identifying patient risk and directing subsequent treatment, therefore minimising morbidity and mortality. The Company’s ‘Par-Alert’ test is a dual assay that simultaneously measures levels of paracetamol and the liver damage marker alanine transferase (ALT).

Deliberate self-poisoning, usually in the form of a drug overdose is a common presentation in emergency departments. There is a small window of opportunity to diagnose and reverse paracetamol overdose. Patients who have overdosed or taken harmful amounts of paracetamol must be rapidly identified and treated appropriately in what is a time-critical situation. An objective diagnostic test is required as healthcare professionals cannot rely on patient-self reporting which is unreliable.

Laboratory blood tests are currently used to measure paracetamol levels and the extent of patient risk (Royal College of Emergency Medicine Guidelines). These can be costly in themselves and when factoring in staff time and equipment such as needles, syringes, and blood sample bottles, it can prolong the time a patient and healthcare professional wait for results. The Cerneretec rapid test, if successfully developed, is hoping to show results quicker than this, enabling an earlier diagnosis, risk stratification and if appropriate, treatment.

Chainvine Limited

Chainvine Ltd is an enterprise software solution and service provider, using various distributed ledger technologies to assist corporate users to access blockchain technologies to aim to deliver operational efficiencies.

Chainvine Ltd seeks to demonstrate how blockchain can potentially increase efficiency, accountability and security as well as reduce costs for large and small entities in the private and public sector.

Chameleon Innovations Pty Limited

Chameleon in the anti-counterfeiting and theft market, providing solutions to businesses and consumers via a revolutionary new application system. Its core asset is a unique marking ink, otherwise known as a “chemical fingerprint”, which can be physically placed upon a product or its packaging to identify the item’s owner and prove authenticity.

More recently, Chameleon combined this established and proven fingerprint ink with its newly developed spray pattern technology, which has trillions of unique patterns. Together, this technology provides a revolutionary, uncopiable, and comprehensive anti-counterfeit solution which can be easily applied to an item or packaging. The spray pattern image and item description are then uploaded and catalogued onto the Chameleon inventory management database which can be authenticated using a smartphone App.

The technology can also be incorporated onto an e-commerce platform for online authentication to confirm the legitimacy of an item before it is purchased online (where it is well known that a large percentage of counterfeit goods are sold). There is no other known provider of this in the market, therefore placing Chameleon at the forefront of an industry that it intends to disrupt.

Compono Pty Limited

Compono has developed an intelligent hiring platform, ‘Shortlyster’, which uses a sophisticated science-based algorithm to optimise the hiring process.

The founders of the Company share an understanding that for a business to succeed, employees must not only be technically sound and qualified for the job, but also aligned in upholding the ethos and values of the business. With this in mind, the cloud-based matchmaking platform quickly and holistically matches businesses together with talent according to skill, competence, passion and personality, whilst also seeking matches according to the culture and core ethos of the hiring workplace. By taking in to account these key factors, a shortlist of candidates best suited to the job is created.

By eliminating bias in the hiring process, the Company believes its disruptive platform will help businesses to combat poor recruitment practices (which can often result in major financial losses), by removing decision bias and enhancing the accuracy of candidate scoring. This saves the employer both time and money and results in an optimised workplace, which the Company believes gives the organisation a true competitive advantage.

The Company is now producing significant revenues and has a growing number of high-profile clients using the Company’s technology globally.

Connect Childcare Group Limited

Connect Childcare Group Ltd has developed a suite of innovative nursery management software systems for the childcare sector, which aims to enable childcare staff to spend more time with the children in their care whilst simultaneously bringing parents closer to the development of their own children. Connect Childcare offers a range of resource solutions suited to the varying needs of single-site nursery operators to the larger multi-site organisations.

Dietary Assessment Limited

Dietary Assessment are on a mission to help reduce diet-related disease globally and as such specialise in providing high-quality nutritional analysis software to researchers, educators and healthcare professionals both in the UK and Internationally.

The Company has developed an innovative online eHealth platform - myfood24® -that automates the diet tracking and analysis process. myfood24 combines a quick and easy-to-use food diary system with a web-portal and mobile apps to enable users to accurately track, monitor and analyse the dietary and nutritional intake. The system has been validated with independent nutrient biomarkers and stands up to the rigour demand by healthcare and research markets.

myfood24 automatically calculates the nutritional value of each food and drink item for over 100 different nutrients, vitamins and minerals to support a wide range of use cases.

Underpinning the robust dietary monitoring platform is a unique and comprehensive food and nutrition dataset that is reflective of the vast range of food products available to consumers. Unlike many other online tools, this information has not been crowd-sourced, instead it has been meticulously created, enhanced and quality checked by a team of nutrition experts.

Originally created at the University of Leeds to support research into the links between diet and health, myfood24 has now been translated into several different languages and tailored for use in education and healthcare too. myfood24 can help healthcare professionals save time and better manage their patients with diet-related diseases such as diabetes and cancer and can help their patients to make better dietary choices and improve their health and quality of life. 

Ecosystem Labs Ltd

Ecosystem Labs (‘Ecosystem’ or the ‘Company’) is a SaaS gamified social platform (delivered via a white-label website or app), providing insider access to private social content which earns the community of members points, to spend via its marketplace and with 100s of top retailers in both the UK and USA. The Company enables its licensors to transform customers or followers into engaged super members, driving fresh retention, referrals and revenues.

Through demand from its clients the Company has built additional modules of service with; integrated banking wallets, chat / chatbots, blockchain IDs, marketing integration and insights tools, all of which are monetised as ancillary revenues. Ecosystem consolidates all of the digital tools an organisation may need, with a consistent user experience and dynamic bespoke modularisation.

Elasmogen Limited

Elasmogen is a biological drug discovery company which aims to serve the cancer therapeutics market. The Company has developed an IP-protected method of exploiting the power of biologics to deliver drugs to very small specific sites in the human body that currently are difficult to treat. 

In this particular case, the Company’s ‘soloMER’ products are site-specific drug delivery proteins derived from shark antibodies. Shark antibodies are incredibly small (considerably smaller than a human antibody) and are highly stable proteins, making them ideal for both site-specific delivery in very small areas and the penetration of solid cancerous tumours. 

Elasmogen initially developed its domains around the treatment of Uveitis, which concerns the inflammation of the coloured section of the eye and can lead to eye pain and changes in vision, but can be used for treating numerous conditions. This has led the Company to further develop their methodology for oncology and has continued development with the core products now targeting differentiated auto-immune diseases. This has included “NDure”, a soloMER product that has been developed to extend the active effect of drugs in the gut, making treatment more controllable and sustained. The Company has also received grant funding to explore the use of their domain for the treatment of Coronaviruses.

Eligochem Limited

EligoChem Ltd has developed a proprietary technology that aims to facilitate the design of highly water-soluble drugs that are absorbed well by the human body, particularly suited to antibiotic drug discovery.

Since its founding, the Company’s technology has created a library of diverse compounds that possess this water-soluble property, and are therefore intended to offer high absorption.

Enso Ltd

Enso Ltd seeks to disrupt the existing tyre market by introducing new materials and processes within the production of electric vehicle tyres, alongside a new subscription model whereby a user effectively leases their car tyres. The Company also intends to offer an outright purchase option to ensure that all markets and customer groups are serviced.

The senior executive team is comprised of experienced tyre specialists and business entrepreneurs bringing together a unique and complimentary skillset, with the intention to develop a new tyre technology designed purely for electric vehicles.

Entropix

FerryX

Filisia Interfaces Limited

Filisia has developed an award winning and evidence-based technology solution that aims to change the way early-years learners and young people with SEN (Special Educational Needs) train their physical, cognitive and communication skills. The Company’s first product was launched under the brand name ‘Cosmo’ which has several key features that have been designed with therapists. The product primarily enables the recording and display of data in order to show progress in the learner. The system consists of a unique, tactile controller in the form of smart dynamic buttons which light up and change colour. These buttons wirelessly link up to Cosmo activities on an iPad via Bluetooth and has a long-lasting rechargeable battery. 

Cosmo is now trusted by nurseries, SEN schools, and therapy centres both in the UK and across Europe. Currently there are a number of activities (designed by teachers, and occupational, physical and speech and language therapists) available on the system. These activities aim to enable training on key skills that will support young people with SEN to lead more fulfilling lives. These include but are not limited to; turn-taking, sequencing, joint attention, storytelling, coordination, cause and effect and vocalisation.

Flex-G Pty Limited

FlexeGRAPH (‘Flex-G’) produces heat transfer fluids enhanced with nanotechnology. The Company’s technology breaks a fundamental historical performance limitation for waterbased coolants, providing an exciting design opportunity for advanced systems where managing high heat loads is critical.

The Company are targeting emerging growth markets in high-performance computing and energy storage. The Company has the focused ambition to become the leading cooling solutions provider for electrified systems. FlexeGRAPH’s vision is to become the new industry standard in heat transfer fluid with unrivalled performance.

The data centre liquid cooling market is expected to register a CAGR of 24.84% during the forecast period (2022-2027), according to a 2021 Mordor Intelligence report. The Company believe this growth will be due to the macro trends in adaptive machine learning, cloud computing, increasing processor power, and the growing need for efficient energy consumption.

FluoretiQ Limited

Founded at the Quantum Technology Enterprise Centre (QTEC) in Bristol, FluoretiQ is developing an innovative diagnostic test to revolutionise the way specific types of bacteria are identified by reducing the timescale for receiving results from days to minutes. The proprietary FluoretiQ sensor technology ‘NANOPLEX’, uses nano probes and a powerful fluorescence sensor to detect and identify harmful bacteria in urine samples, ensuring that patients receive the most effective antibiotic treatment from the start of diagnosis. 

A slow diagnosis may lead to additional bed days for a patient, thus higher costs for the NHS. The market opportunity for a quicker diagnostic test, therefore, highlights a potential cost saving as well as the possibility of saving lives if super-bugs can be detected sooner. The Company has developed a strong team, made up of scientific experience and executives with impressive track-records of commercialising technology and medical innovations.

GenoME

Glyconics Limited

COPD specifically refers to a group of lung conditions that cause breathing difficulty and mainly affects smokers in later life. According to the World Health Organisation, it is the third greatest cause of death worldwide. However, Glyconics advise it is currently an under-diagnosed condition with a high proportion of sufferers unaware of their diagnosis. To date, there is no existing state-of-the-art technology available to identify disease severity, disease progression or indicate early exacerbation (periods of time when symptoms can particularly flare up) in COPD. 

The Company aims to address this unmet need through its innovative point-of-care test technology. Glyconics has developed a low-cost, easy-to-use, hand-held, miniaturised device for easy detection and monitoring by healthcare workers. The device works by simply applying a small saliva sample from a patient onto the surface of the device. The sample is internalised, and the composition is analysed by the Company’s unique software which identifies the infra-red spectrum pattern, with results given in less than 10 minutes. The result will give an indication of whether the patient has COPD and whether an exacerbation is imminent.

Greylist Trace Limited

GreyList Trace Limited has developed an asset tracing tool called GreyList that can detect if two parties have been in email communication. GreyList is legal, its technology has been developed to not breach computer misuse or data protection laws. GreyList represents a potentially major breakthrough for the investigations sector, especially in asset-tracing because it has been designed to detect, quickly and reliably, which financial institutions have been used to hide money.

Headbox Solutions Ltd

Headbox Solutions Ltd has developed a suite of software products that allow businesses and individuals to decrease the cost and time involved with booking, managing, and delivering on meetings and events.

The Company is operating in both the B2B and B2C markets which have different competitive landscapes. The B2B sector is currently dominated by large incumbents that predominantly operate a low-tech agency model. HeadBox has already won a number of significant clients from such incumbents, including some well-known brands.

The challenge with the B2C market has been to profitably operate in a space characterised by a lack of repeatable bookings, low conversion rate of enquiries and low value high volume transactions. Current competitors have not managed to do this with labour intensive solutions. Headboxs’ Lead Feed is a ‘no touch’ solution, with a high profit margin. Two of the existing competitors, have already approached HeadBox asking if Headbox would be interested in acquiring them, such is the competitive proposition offered by Headbox.

The Company is post-revenue and is now working on scaling both in the UK and internationally.

Health Compare Limited

Health Compare believes there is a gap in the market to provide patients with a unique, consumer championing web comparison platform to help them make better informed decisions when it comes to selecting their choice of health care. 

UK healthcare is amongst the very best in the world, but there is huge variation across both the NHS and private healthcare regarding quality and waiting times.

The Company has launched a platform which targets a wide range of UK health care markets including hospitals, care homes, private GP consultations, health insurance providers and health products.

Health Compare is seeking to make a positive difference to people’s health and wellbeing, by enabling people to safely obtain the NHS elective treatment either more quickly, at higher quality hospitals, or more cost effectively if they wish to pay.

Hurricane Modular Commerce Limited

Hurricane Modular Commerce Ltd has developed a duty and tax engine for use by online retailers. With the volume of international online retail increasing, retailers face the problem of being able to show prospective consumers the total cost of a purchase which includes cross-border shipping, duty and taxation that may apply when importing/exporting online purchased items. The Company’s proposition seeks to enable retailers to accurately show the total cost to shoppers before purchase, with the Company suggesting that this could improve the conversion rate of purchases.

Ibis Vision

Ibis Vision Ltd has developed ‘Ring of Sight’ (ROS), an eye technology-based test that is specifically designed for the early detection of glaucoma. Glaucoma is a common cause of blindness and is caused by a build-up of pressure within the eye which in turn can damage the optic nerve and the nerve fibres from the retina. Once damage is detected it is important to make the diagnosis as soon as possible to commence treatment.
 

J&C IT Investments Limited

J & C IT Investments have developed a student lifestyle app called “Stunii” which has been designed to give students the real experience of their new University city offering deals and discounts local to them.

The app offers exclusive, localised discounts to high street businesses and venues.

Kalgera Limited

Kalgera is developing a platform that utilises proprietary neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence technology, to help protect financial wellbeing for vulnerable customers who are more at risk of financial abuse and fraud – in particular, customers in the early stages of dementia. The Company is developing two core assets, the first being an App that securely connects bank accounts and alerts loved ones or carers to suspicious activity on monitored bank accounts. The second product is a B2B proposition that helps banks better protect their vulnerable customers by detecting if they are at risk of financial harm. 

With more older people now online and an increase of people living with dementia, the opportunities in the digital age continue to bring new possibilities for the vulnerable to fall victim to financial harm. Furthermore, reforms to private pensions mean fraudsters are provided with further opportunity to potentially draw all their victim’s pensions in cash. 

The Company is now working with a number of banks, offering their technology as a SaaS solution to provide clients with additional financial security.

Keia Wellness Limited

Keia was founded to enable patients to easily locate wellness practitioners in their local area. The Company’s cloud-based platform provides access to wellness therapies, ranging from acupuncture, massage and physiotherapy to relationship counselling and yoga. In addition, the wider wellness market also encompasses beauticians, hairdressers and masseurs and these professions will also be included in the Company’s innovative digital platform. 

The platform aims to bring these varied services to the consumer via home visits, video appointments, and clinic visits. A significant selling point for the platform is that it allows the practitioners to build their own personalised ‘shop front’ and profile to attract custom. 

The global fitness and wellness markets are highly competitive, with the Global Wellness Institute estimating a global market size of $4.2tn. However, the Company has reported that there is currently no single, potentially global platform that brings together all available wellness offerings into one single consumer view. 

The Company has stated that its ultimate objective is to become the primary go-to source for consumers seeking wellness information and opinion, offering a benefit to both the needs of the consumer and the practitioner. It intends to become the trusted global brand through which consumers can research, compare and book.

L3M Technologies Limited

L3M Technologies is working with a high-profile worldwide brand to develop and subsequently launch an innovative wellness and fitness technology device to be targeted at users seeking to optimise their physical and cognition performance.

The intended software platform and data services aims to enhance existing market products and will comprise of big data analyses, artificial intelligence models and software that communicates with, and differentiates from, current market offerings in the smartwatch/smart wristband markets.

Levitex Foams Limited

The Company’s new foam products directly address poor body alignment and posture whilst a person is in bed. In a medical capacity, failure to address poor posture can significantly exacerbate a patient’s medical condition and can lead to issues such as pressure sores and possible sleep deprivation. The result of which can worsen the patient’s condition, often leading to lengthy and therefore more costly stays in hospital.

After initially focusing on the healthcare market, the Company has now pivoted its strategy to focusing on the retail consumer sector, with their market research and successful early traction of the product demonstrating this sector is much more accessible and lucrative.

The Company sees a real opportunity globally to re-think orthopaedics mattresses. By using the very latest foam material combined with the latest scientific research, it can cement its brand into a growing market whilst actively seeking solutions to what is a costly problem.

Liverpool ChiroChem Limited

Liverpool ChiroChem (’LCC’) operates in the supply chain of pharmaceutical research and development. The Company manufacture specialist compounds which help streamline the drug discovery and development process for other lab-based researchers, as well as making it more cost effective. 

The Company specifically produce compounds utilising chiral molecules, which are essentially molecules that are the mirror images of each other. The understanding of chiral compounds is vital in the pharmaceutical industry as the effects from mirroring molecules can produce very diverse positive and negative effects upon those taking the drug. An example of where this can be seen is in the drug, Thalidomide. 

Thalidomide became very popular with pregnant women back in the 1960s for treatment of morning sickness, however negative associations (aka the chirality of the compound) meant the drug caused a huge number of birth defects once the babies were born. It is therefore vital to assess chiral compounds and all the effects before releasing a drug to market. 

Chiral compounds, when all the effects are sufficiently understood, can assist in producing more consistent research and cause fewer side effects. LCC produce these compounds with high levels of purity, and these are available for the pharma and bio-tech industries to purchase where there is a clear market need.

Maneno Holding Ltd

Maneno has developed an EdTech AI technology platform that analyses text from children’s books and automatically generates interactive content and social engagement which improves literacy and encourages reading – all whilst enjoying favourite titles from leading publishers.

The technology assesses and analyses the readers abilities as they use the app (interactions with the text, speech recognition, pages per minute, voice intonation, understanding of text/content via interaction i.e. AI generated quizzes) - aiming for maximum engagement and continuous learning suitable to their current level. The technology offers children, parents and teachers unique insights and trustworthy data to understand each child’s progression.

Metix Ltd

Metix is a medical technology company specialising in the development of portable, non-invasive, hand-held, network linked vital signs monitors for use by medics and first responders in the field. Its two principal products under development are:

COREMED X: an emergency vital signs monitor that measures heart rate, respiration rate, blood oxygen level, blood pressure and body temperature. Readings are automatically uploaded to a web-based database server over a data network connection or via Bluetooth: and

COREMED M: a mobile remote vital-sign monitoring device linked to the GPS/GPRS network and incorporating proprietary sensing technologies and software algorithms. The intended users of this portable technology are clinicians working in rural, remote, or extreme environments. Due to the size of incumbent technologies currently available, remote clinics and medical military corps invariably use their makeshift tents to provide medical treatment, therefore space is a premium.

The primary advantage of COREMED is the combination of functionality and compactness. The Company anticipates sales from four key revenue streams:

• Direct sales to pre-hospital assessment healthcare services, such as ambulance trusts.
• Direct sales to the defence sector.
• Partnering with a medical device distributor.
• Licensing other suppliers to sell COREMED products.

Mumac

AMD, a common condition that affects the middle part of a sufferer’s vision usually affects people in their 50s and 60s and, without treatment, can cause eyesight to worsen over time, potentially leading to complete vision loss.

The Company’s core asset, ‘RapiDa’, is a compact instrument designed for the rapid screening of early-stage AMD and can also be used ongoingly during treatment to monitor any potential progression of the disease. Additionally, the tool is able to quickly evaluate the effectiveness of the therapy prescribed and provides doctors with the opportunity to change treatment if necessary. Given the high costs associated with treating AMD, there is a clinical need for a tool like RapiDa to validate the effectiveness of prescribed therapies and aid patients find a suitable treatment quickly.

The diagnostics market for eye related ailments is substantial and the UK alone currently has around 1.5m people affected by macular disease. The Company has identified a number of revenue streams including selling the product to specialist eye hospitals, eye clinics, diagnostic centres and academic research centres.

Mynurva Limited

Mynurva Limited aims to transform behavioural health by using technology to make high quality, reliable behavioural healthcare accessible anywhere, discreetly and securely.

The Company aims to build on the digital health and marketing success of its founders to address the estimated up to £99bn cost of mental health to the UK economy in the creation of a live video platform connecting users with therapists and counsellors.

Source: “Thriving at Work: The Independent Review of Mental Health and Employers, Stevenson and Farmer, October 2017”

NanOptima Limited

NanOptima has developed a drug delivery platform for use in ophthalmology (eye diseases and disorders). In particular, the Company is seeking to improve treatment methods for patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD is an eye disease that affects central vision and can cause permanent vision loss.

AMD is categorised into wet and dry AMD – both are irreversible, however the progression of wet-AMD can be halted if treated with regular eye injections. Although treatment for wet-AMD exists, many patients do not complete treatment which leads to disease progression. The NanOptima platform uses approved drugs to deliver wet-AMD treatment over a sustained period, reducing the
frequency of treatments required and therefore reducing the risk of incomplete treatment.

NanOptima has to date completed proof of concept studies and demonstrated sustained release capabilities of the platform. NanOptima has also generated valuable IP and developed multiple future partnering opportunities. The Company is now progressing to a pre-clinical development programme that aims to demonstrate safety in living tissue (in vivo). In vivo trials will use approved drugs and NanOptima delivery platform to observe clinical features.

Ocutec Ltd

Ocutec specialises in the development and commercialisation of soft contact lenses using polyethylene glycol (PEG) polymer chemistry as the basis of its highly biocompatible contact lenses. Current market offerings made from silicone-hydrogel materials can be challenging to develop for manufacturers and typically can be uncomfortable to wear towards the end of the day. Ocutec intends to disrupt the market with its patented solution to deliver excellent comfort and unprecedented hydrogel oxygen performance.

The Company secured £1.5m in a seed funding round, led by Deepbridge. This included £1m of funding from the Deepbridge Technology Growth EIS fund, £360k from Intuitive Investments Group (IIG) and a £100k SMART grant. The Company is utilising the funds to help support its development projects, purchase new equipment, and recruit further team members.

Pacla Medical Limited

Pacla Medical Ltd is a health care device company developing a new generation robotic physiotherapy device (‘BackHug’) which aims to improve the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis (MS), chronic back pain and other conditions.

The device aims to allow treatment in the home to support self-management for patients without a professional practitioner being present. The Company is initially targeting MS and chronic back pain sufferers, but the Company also believes that the device has the potential to benefit patients with other conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease.     

Perse Technology Ltd

The Investment Opportunity Perse Technology is a B2B data service that enables individuals and businesses to automatically buy, store or sell energy at the best commercial rates with the lowest carbon impact.

The Company has built a solution, under the brand name Labrador, that allows energy consumers (both business and domestic) to automatically and quickly change energy tariffs to the most suitable, cheapest and greenest alternative. The solution is apparently easier to use than current switching options and has already been validated by a Price Comparison Website the Company is in contract talks with.

Fundamentally, this is a big data play. The Company will automatically get consent from the end energy consumer to collect their energy usage data, which can then be monetised. The Company aims to collect more and better quality data, achieved by their go to market plan.

The market potential is significant, with Perse estimating that consumers could save C. 400p.a., SMEs saving circa 3,000p.a. and larger industrial companies potentially able to save ten of thousands of pounds. With Perse charging on transaction basis, based on consumption, revenue multiples are significant in the UK alone.

Picture Path Limited

Autism Spectrum Disorder (‘ASD’), commonly referred to as autism, is a lifelong, neuro-developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with, and relates to, other people and the world around them.

Picture Path Ltd intends to develop a mobile and web-based software product that will be targeted for use by mainstream and specialist schools in order to aim to assist pupils with autism in understanding routines and activities. This product will comprise of a visual timetable, using imagery to break down the requisite steps of a task or a routine throughout the school day.

RD Vault Limited

RDVault Ltd aims to help early-stage life science companies, by automating their R&D tax claims process, as well as providing life-sciences management and equipment location services. RDvault Ltd has a specific focus towards assisting UK life science companies with important administrative processes such as the claim of R&D tax credits.

Saltee Skincare Limited

Saltee Skincare has created and launched a premium, clean and luxurious sun protection product. The Company is building an ‘inspirational brand,’ offering functional yet visually aesthetic products, with an aim to turn sun cream application into a go to daily skincare item rather than a chore.

Formulated in the UK, the Company’s responsibly sourced product range includes SPF 50 face formulas and SPF 30 body lotions, which are all cruelty free and reef friendly. In addition, the product is free from parabens and oxybenzone, making it a safer alternative for use in the sea.

In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, the Company has also produced a hand gel, designed to be a luxury hand sanitiser infused with 70% alcohol and uses Neroli Oils to provide hydration to hands.

The Company states, “Saltee products are vegan friendly, cruelty free, paraben free, gluten free and oxybenzone free, making them safer for our oceans. Each product has also been dermatologically tested, so it’s suitable for even the most sensitive skin and our packaging is made from responsibly sourced materials.”

The Company has developed partnerships with a number of high-end brands and now producing initial commercial revenues.

Sardina Systems Limited

Sardina Systems has successfully developed its first operational iteration of FishOS, which is a cloud-automation solution built on OpenStack, providing users with a full suite of tools for cloud data management operations.

As the prevalence of cloud computing has accelerated in recent years, greater legislation (such as the General Data Protection Regulation introduced in 2016) has resulted in a greater demand for cloud automation services by which cloud users seek to automate their access to the cloud data servers, to ensure regulatory compliance.

Against this context, the Company’s FishOS solution is an enterprise cloud platform that delivers turnkey infrastructure for traditional enterprise workload users, as well as next-generation applications such as automated manufacturing. FishOS facilitates data security and protection, zero‐click operations and AI-enabled operational simplicity through the use of rules-based automation.

The Company’s platform solution offers all of the functionalities that enterprises require as standard, including auto-failover, disaster recovery, smooth upgrade path, monitoring, integration and coexistence with existing infrastructure. The Company also asserts it is the first platform to enable Zero-Downtime upgrades to the system, which offers significant benefits to global organisations spanning various time zones.

School Wellbeing Accelerator Limited

School Wellbeing Accelerator has been created to support school leaders in transforming culture, improving staff wellbeing and performance and tackling supporting teachers’ mental health.

There is a current issue in the UK with a decline in teacher retention rates across all career stages, with an increasing proportion of recent recruits and more experienced teachers leaving the profession. The Company believes its core product serves a gap in the market where existing alternatives fail to solve the problem. The self-managed solution, ‘Welbee’, gives schools their own hub and allows them to survey staff, manage leadership assessments, and link these directly to relevant training. Using outcomes and benchmarks, this data will provide schools with tailored actions to be incorporated into their school development plan. In addition, the platform has been developed to be easily shared with Ofsted, to clearly show that the school is meeting the Leadership and Management judgement included within the new framework.

The Company has started to sell directly to schools and plan to sell the product on a tiered subscription basis offering varying levels of service, which is also linked to the size of the school.

Sky Medical Technology Limited

Sky Medical Technology Ltd has developed the OnPulseTM technology platform, which has been proven to significantly improve blood flow (both volume and velocity). The results indicate that the platform can be used across a variety of indications, challenging both pharmaceutical and device solutions on the market today.

The primary initial applications for the technology are:

- Prevention and treatment of Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT);

- Surgical recovery;

- Chronic wound care (of ‘hard to heal’ wounds); and

- Elite sports recovery.

Smallspark Space Systems Limited

Via the use of AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning), SmallSpark Space Systems is developing optimisation software to assist in the design of complex launch systems, including its own low-cost rocket engines. The software is being developed and commercialised as a product in its own right, with the aim of providing multiple revenues streams to support the Company in the development of rockets, which aim to lower the cost of access to low earth orbit for small satellite launches. The Company perceives this to be a huge opportunity for the UK aerospace industry to provide an invaluable service that ensures significant cost savings.

Over the next decade, the demand for agile, low cost, dedicated launches to space for low mass satellites is expected to grow considerably. Historically, satellites were high mass and expensive, servicing potentially hundreds of thousands of clients simultaneously. With the reduction in cost of computing technology, it has made far more economic sense to spread the risk over hundreds of smaller satellites, and it is this trend which SmallSpark is aiming to commercialise

Stent Tek Ltd

Pathfinder Medical (Trading name for Stent Tek Ltd) has developed an innovative catheter system that aims to enable patients to receive haemodialysis (a method of removing waste products and extra fluid, which build up in the blood when the kidneys are no longer able to function properly) in an improved manner. The Company is developing a procedure that uses a ‘stent graft’ (in effect, a synthetic tube) to create a process that the Company believes is less traumatic than surgery.

Thalia Design Automation Limited

Thalia Design Automation has developed a design automation platform, ‘AMALIA’, which aims to reimagine the design of analog and mixed signal circuits. Using advanced AI algorithms and targeted automation, they are seeking to disrupt the semiconductor industry, by aiming to cut development time and costs significantly for IP houses and IC design companies

Semiconductors are used in many electronic appliances, as well as social infrastructure. As reported by Hitachi:

“The advances of semiconductor technology have driven systems efficiency, miniaturisation and energy savings, which in turn help to preserve the global environment.”

Thinking Machine Systems Limited

Thinking Machine Systems is a virtual value manager platform that aims to reduce value leakage and cost drivers associated with managing technology service relationships. The Company was built upon the founders’ desire to assimilate disparate data found in telecom contracts and invoices and make working from the same source of information easier for teams within an organisation.

The solution utilises artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics to monitor value and cost drivers, identify opportunities and data discrepancies as well as understand service consumption patterns and service performance. Additionally, once data is analysed by the system, it produces reports and recommendations, allowing users to trace back bad data to its source and eliminate it.

The Company believes that the product can uncover hidden value in telecommunications and technology costs of businesses. And with the help of AI and machine learning, businesses will be able to take full control of their technology services contracts more efficiently, optimising team performance.

Tookie Limited

Tookie Ltd has developed a portfolio of innovative products which seek to assist patients with medical problems surrounding the securing of central venous catheters.  The catheters are put in place to allow long-term medicine treatment with the objective of reducing the risk of catheter lines being pulled out. The Company’s focus is to ensure that their products are relatively simple to use, fit for purpose, and are comfortable for patients when fitted.

Touch Biometrix Limited

Touch Biometrix has designed a new range of fingerprint sensors that can be easily integrated into smart objects and mobile devices for a more convenient and secure identity authentication experience. The proprietary technology is set to disrupt the world of fingerprint sensing with a range of conformal, ultra-thin fingerprint sensors that are manufactured on plastic and can be made to any shape or size.

The Company’s fingerprint sensing platform enables people to touch their device and be recognised instantly using its proprietary algorithms designed to offer unbeatable security, at a fraction of the cost of existing silicon-based fingerprint sensing technology.

Biometric identity authentication is a globally growing market and is outsmarting every other security measure due to the vast improvements it offers for the overall ergonomic user experience. These high-performance, low-cost sensors presents an unprecedented product offering, and the conformability of the plastic material used opens a myriad of product applications across multiple verticals.

Since incorporation, the Company has worked to ensure that there is robust IP protection in place and the business now holds an extensive patent portfolio.

The Company is now engaged with a leading Japanese multinational electronics brand on a two-year Joint Development Agreement, who will manufacture Touch Biometrix’s initial products.

Transcriptogen Limited

Transcriptogen Ltd is developing a cancer treatment.  The Company has developed a molecule, TSG1301, which is intended to treat Breast and Pancreatic Cancer tumours.

Trigenex Limited

Working in partnership with industry leading cosmetics brands, Trigenex is working to disrupt the beauty market with technologies that deliver best in class, innovative and personalised beauty experiences. The Company has produced three key products, with the overarching aim of disrupting the cosmetics industry by being the only technology currently on the market which produces a unique product for every customer.

The Company’s products can also be offered in conjunction with beauty brands and retailers by offering a white-label version of the Company’s product. This developed technology is able to work with the brand’s formula, whist also providing shade matching capabilities, adapting and personalising the end result for consumers.

Originally focused on providing in-store experiences in partnership with major retailers, the Company has subsequently developed an impressive online proposition which has attracted interest from a number of high profile cosmetic brands. This is operating in conjunction with the original in-store proposition, and the Company is now working with a number of high street retailers to roll out paid for trials.

Whilst continuing the fine-tune its products, the Company is now focused on accelerating commercial revenues and expanding its partnership network.

Videregen Limited

Using proprietary stem-cell based technology, the Company is developing biological ‘scaffolds’ from the patient’s donated organ/tissue. This is then added to the patient’s own stem cells, thus creating a bespoke replacement or repair of the afflicted area. The use of the patient’s own cells is taken from their bone marrow and reduces the likelihood of their body rejecting the surgery. The same technology and know-how can be applied to a multitude of organ and tissue replacement products to provide curative therapies for a range of devastating diseases. 

There is no intention to compete directly with human organ transplants, only to supplement this scarce resource and relieve pressure on organ transplant and tissue repair waiting lists. 

The lead project is on the treatment of Bronchopleural Fistula (BPF) – a medical complication where an abnormal airway forms in the lungs following lung surgery, chemotherapy, or an infection. This can result in a life-threatening infection which often require multiple surgeries to resolve, long hospital stays, and a major impact on quality of life. 

Videregen believes a standardised and reliable treatment option is lacking, despite some improvements in surgical techniques and advancements in treatment options.

VoxSmart Limited

VoxSmart Ltd is a mobile recording provider, aiming to address the global financial services compliance challenges of enabling integrated mobility and social technology within heavily regulated industries. 

The Company’s proprietary cloud-based mobile technology has been developed to capture, record, store, transcribe and analyse mobile calls, messages and voicemail using one platform. 

The platform is designed to be used with various handset technologies, operating systems and network operators.

vTime Holdings Limited

vTime is developing pioneering platforms and services that facilitate sociable networking in alternate realities, namely; Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), or collectively known together as Extended/Cross Reality (XR). The Company has created two core social app products to date and is working with third-parties to produce exclusive user engagement.

The Company is working with businesses across a multitude of sectors, such as entertainment, healthcare, video conferencing, telecoms, hospitality and tourism. Furthermore, the team is collaborating with some of the world’s biggest brands to help them connect and drive engagement with their consumers and fans in new immersive realities.

vTime is working with City Football Group, the world’s largest private owner and football club operator, to develop bespoke sports fan engagement and content. The Company is also engaged with one of the world’s largest drinks manufacturers regarding potential experiential applications in their visitor centres.

Further to the launch of vTag, which provides AR immersion in real destinations, vTime has initiated interesting conversations with a number of tourist destinations and is working with them to enhance visitor experiences.

With its applications available via all dominant VR formats and with work ongoing with some of the world’s largest technology companies, the Company continues to grow commercial

Zilico Limited

Zilico has developed an innovative cancer diagnostic technology that measures electrical impedance to identify cancerous/non-cancerous tissues. Simply put, the device uses an electrical pulse to measure tissue density which can determine whether it is cancerous/pre-cancerous/ non-cancerous. 

Different human organs and tissues have characteristic electrical impedances – effective resistance to electric currents. The device can detect deviations from these values to differentiate between normal, cancerous, and precancerous tissue. 

The device seeks to improve on current cancer screening programmes by providing accurate and objective results in real time and reducing the requirement for biopsies, which can be uncomfortable and unnecessary for the patient. 

The initial focus for Zilico is to address the detection of cervical cancer with its product ‘ZedScan’. With its technology, the Company aims to improve on current cervical cancer screening methods (known as the ‘Pap’ test) which it believes to be costly, subjective, and involves a time delay in the delivering of test results.