Meet the 2023 Rising Stars Regional Winners
Tech Nation is delighted to announce the 33 Regional Winners in the fifth iteration of our early stage scaleup competition, Rising Stars.
These companies representing the brightest of UK tech with the most potential to scale in the year to come, selected by expert judges from across the UK tech ecosystem. Regional Winners will benefit from significant profile raising, masterclasses and networking opportunities to put their business in front of leading investors, influencers and corporates.
While 80% of startups fail within their first 2-5 years, over 95% of startups on Tech Nation’s growth programmes have gone on to scale, including companies from Rising Stars. This year, ambitious growth plans are evident among the finalists which Tech Nation will support – 82% plan to expand internationally in the next 12 months and 97% are currently raising investment. Companies have secured funding from a variety of sources demonstrating the range of options available to UK entrepreneurs: 44% have had VC funding, 44% have had angel funding, 38% have had government funding and 21% have had funding from family and friends.
Key trends amongst the 2023 cohort show that 1 in 3 companies are using AI technology in their product and service development. When looking at sectors,healthtech, cleantech and marketing tech came second as top areas of focus for this year’s Regional Winners. Additionally, 45% of companies include at least one female founder and almost 20% include a founder from an ethnic minority.
Matt Exley, Rising Stars Lead at Tech Nation, said: “Over the past five years Tech Nation Rising Stars has searched for, supported and celebrated the UK’s best early-stage tech companies. Our expert judges from across the tech economy have selected the 33 from nearly 400 applicants and assessed them on their potential to scale. These companies now receive support on preparing for corporate ventures, improving sales and marketing, engaging with investors and improving their pitch.
“Being named a Tech Nation Rising Star doesn’t just get you noticed in the UK; the global tech economy recognises and values this endorsement. These 33 businesses represent the most promising emerging tech teams, products and services of 2023 and are certainly the ones to watch. “
The Regional Winners are progressing to the Semi Finals in February where the competition will culminate with a showcase of the top 10 National Winners in March.
Meet the Rising Stars 5.0 Regional Winners:
- East of England
Purrmetrix provides better insights into building performance by combining energy and environmental data from a redeployable IoT toolset.
City winner in: Cambridge
Subsector: IoT
Medwise.ai helps clinicians quickly find answers to their questions at the point of care.
City winner in: Cambridge
Subsector: AI
RippleXn enables brands to ensure advertising compliance is met in real-time, at scale across social video
City winner in: Cambridge
Subsector: Martech
- North East
PulmoBioMed develops AI-based technology and product design for a medical device to capture and analyse exhaled breath. Exhaled breath contains a wealth of biomarkers that can detect and be used to monitor over 40 disease states.
City winner in: Newcastle
Subsector: Genomics/AI
Vibbl reduces teacher workload by enabling better, faster and more collaborative feedback.
City winner in: Newcastle
Subsector: Edtech
Safer Date was created to protect people from online crimes including fraud, assault, stalking, harassment and even murder which happen all too often as a result of the lack of safety and regulation in the dating industry. Safer Date provides real-time ID checks, global criminal background checks and more which all put customer safety and wellbeing at the forefront of everything Safer Date does.
City winner in: Newcastle
Subsector: Safety tech
- South West
digiLab’s self-optimising Machine Learning platform transforms decision efficiency and sustainability in safety-critical applications.
City winner in: Exeter
Subsector: AI
Amutri is a 3D Visualisation software product delivered via a Software As A Service (SaaS) model, which automates the creation, hosting, and deployment of real-time rendered 3D visualisations.
City winner in: Falmouth
Subsector: Design tech / 3D visualisation
Siloton develops optical-coherence-tomography-based chips, aiming to create a portable eye scanner which can detect eye conditions and prevent blindness.
City winner in: Bristol
Subsector: Healthtech / Photonics
- Midlands
AppScore is a SaaS platform that helps partners and businesses assess, plan and execute cloud migration and modernisation.
City winner in: Birmingham
Subsector: Cloud computing
Inicio.ai provides businesses and organisations that are managing debt books an alternative solution to capture the income & expenditure (I&E) information for their customers that are in debt.
City winner in: Leicester
Subsector: Fintech
Digital Innk is disrupting the traditional leasing and mobility sector through its ViSN platform, which makes running a fleet easier, cheaper, and more efficient.
City winner in: Birmingham
Subsector: AI
- Scotland
Danu is currently developing a highly innovative intelligent robotic waste sorting and mining system that is sustainable, affordable, flexible, scalable and future proof. It can be used by any recycling facility worldwide regardless of its size, its current technology or location.
City winner in: Edinburgh
Subsector: Robotics / AI
MyCustomerLens is the always-on client intelligence platform for professional services firms.
City winner in: Glasgow
Subsector: AI
SENSEcity is an immersive design Studio based in Glasgow which specialises in the development of Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) experiences for the cultural heritage and tourism sectors.
City winner in: Glasgow
Subsector: AR/VR
- North West
VidiVet gives pet parents instant access to a vet from anywhere in the world at any time of day.
City winner in: Liverpool
Subsector: Healthtech
RiskSmart operates an online risk management platform designed to digitalise and streamline processes.
City winner in: Manchester
Subsector: Regtech
BetMate’s vision is to become the home of social betting and to do this BetMate will have a suite of peer-to-peer games under the Betmate umbrella.
City winner in: Liverpool
Subsector: Gamification
- London
Trumpet centralises the whole sales cycle with one link (called Pods) that follows a buyer on the whole sales journey with everything they need to make the deal and then get onboarded.
City winner in: London
Subsector: Martech
Augnet extracts unique data through an encrypted global network of devices to validate the quality of hundreds of SMS providers. Messages sent via Augnet will be optimized via its routing algorithm.
City winner in: London
Subsector: Martech / Big data
SPOKE is a music-led mindfulness app. It makes mental wellness relevant to the millions unserved by working with the world’s best musicians and cultural leaders.
City winner in: London
Subsector: Healthtech
- Wales
Stratigens software provides strategic decision intelligence. Its mission is to help companies join the dots between workforce and workplace so that they make decisions that are data-led, fast and cost effective
City winner in: Cardiff
Subsector: HRtech
Virtus Tech is a Google-backed expert in virtual reality technology. Its mission is to provide companies with a no code solution to build a library of unlimited interactive VR training simulations which is also accessible on any device.
City winner in: Cardiff
Subsector: AI, AR/VR
Pai Language Learning is a multilingual NLG (Natural Language Generation) company that wants to use data science to provide services and information in all languages.
City winner in: Anglesey
Subsector: Edtech
- South East
OneShot is a fully autonomous sales prospecting solution for B2B companies. OneShot removes the need to hire sales people to generate new business meetings.
City winner in: Milton Keynes
Subsector: AI
Artscapy is the most comprehensive platform dedicated to art buying, collecting and investing, which it is redefining by removing archaic and opaque business practices and consolidating under one roof a fragmented digital ecosystem. Artscapy answers to only one stakeholder: the art buyer.
City winner in: Brighton
Subsector: Marketplace
Labl.it is an all-in-one commercial kitchen label printer offering a fast and cheap way to keep your kitchen compliant with EHO food labelling guidelines. Labl.it is the only handheld portable commercial kitchen label printer. Its cloud based software has been specifically designed for the kitchen environment, with features and functionality within the software that saves valuable hospitality labour hours.
City winner in: Brighton
Subsector: Food tech / Cleantech
- Northern Ireland
Bioledger provides SaaS for biofuel supply chain traceability and compliance for businesses regulated by the EU Renewable Energy Directive which includes all oil companies, biofuel producers, agricultural producers and waste management companies. There are currently 8000 businesses in 180 countries controlled by this regulation and who supply the $100 billion/yr mandatory biofuel market in Europe.
City winner in: Derry-Londonderry
Subsector: Cleantech / Regtech
IncluTech’s award-winning software helps people feel safe and secure in an emergency and enables them to know what to do and when to do it. It focuses on building greater inclusion and access; shaped by research and user centric design. Not only will its technology save lives now, but help to predict and prevent future emergencies.
City winner in: Belfast
Subsector: Safety tech
Anneal makes collaborative software for the acceleration of multidisciplinary, R&D intensive engineering. Practically, Anneal’s cloud-native software acts to facilitate, capture, and store the technical discussions, advisory comments, and design parameters that actually drive the design of physical products.
City winner in: Belfast
Subsector: Engineering
- Yorkshire
Interact DC’s world-first machine-learning tool reduces data centre energy use, emissions, and waste by analysing server efficiency and suggesting optimal hardware replacements, often matching compute power with lower energy use, cost, and emissions.
City winner in: York
Subsector: Cleantech
Answer Pay secures bill payments in banking apps. Its certified “Payments as a Service” platform connects banks to Request to Pay, the new messaging standard for experience-rich payments.
City winner in: Leeds
Subsector: Fintech
JUST:Access is disrupting the manual transcription sector, where prices are stubbornly high with poor turnaround times. Using proprietary NLP & ML, transcripts are delivered twice as fast at half the price.
City winner in: Leeds
Subsector: Lawtech / AI
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