Meet the Rising Stars Grand Finalists

We are delighted to announce the companies selected to pitch live on stage at the Rising Stars Grand Final taking place at London Tech Week. This prestigious event offers a platform for the most innovative early-stage tech startups to showcase their ideas and gain national recognition.

The Grand Final will feature a distinguished judging panel, including Tej Lalvani (CEO of Vitabiotics and Dragon on BBC’s Dragon Den), Deidre O’Neill (Co-Founder of Hertility Health), Oliver Kent-Braham (Co-CEO of Marshmallow), Julia Hoggett (CEO of London Stock Exchange), and Simon Bumfrey (Head of Technology and Life Sciences for HSBC Innovation Banking).

Finalists will compete for an array of prizes designed to accelerate their business growth. These include a £30k media package, an £80k brand and marketing campaign, a £60k executive hire, and much more. The event promises unparalleled exposure and networking opportunities, helping startups to scale and succeed.

Meet our Fantastic Rising Stars Grand Finalists:

Configur – Configur is code-free data software that enables businesses to centralise data, address data literacy challenges in the business, empower data-driven decisions and navigate implementation of controlled AI processes. Working across 15 sectors with an array of use cases, Configur’s flexibility is positioned to help any organisation.

Econominds – Econominds is a multi-award winning EdTech company providing a gamified learning experience using AI; 15 minutes on our platform is equal to 2 hours in the classroom. With over 40 gamification tools and AI personalisation, we are changing how the students of tomorrow will learn, forever!

Finalrentals –  Final Rentals gives local car companies access to three critical tools to accelerate sales and optimise business performance: 1. An online booking platform, which is directly connected to the largest global websites where customers search for car rentals (Expedia, Kayak etc.); 2. A cloud-based dashboard to manage all bookings efficiently ; and 3. an online system offering extras including insurance to boost customer transaction value.

Future Greens – Future Greens is on a mission to build and operate localised urban vertical farms, forgoing the industry standard of high-risk, capital-intensive ‘mega-farms’ that only work at scale. To enable this, we designed and built a proprietary Anaerobic Digester that provides indoor farming with electricity, heat, CO2 and fertiliser. Extracting these inputs from organic waste reduces operational costs by 60% vs conventional vertical farms. On top of increasing our profit margin, this approach also prevents 32.2 kg of CO2 emissions with every kg of produce grown.

Lambda Energy – Lambda increases crop yields in greenhouses by up to 20% via an active coating applied externally to the greenhouse panels. Greenhouse growers, Lambda’s end customers, are paid by weight of produce and suffer from low margins of circa 5%, though on bad years they barely break even. Meanwhile we need more resilient and sustainable food systems as global temperatures rise due to climate change, 10% of the population is starving and it is predicted that we will need 70% more food by year 2050, the year of next zero. What is more, electricity bills in Europe have increased by circa 500%, which has led growers to switch off their growth lights to save on their electricity bills – this decreased production by 25%, leading to losses of circa £5,600/acre.

Manageable – Manageable exists to give everyone at work the gift of a great manager. Over 80% of managers around the world have been thrust into the job without any training at all — that’s 100 million managers, managing 1 billion people. We transform managers into coaches. Over the last 3 years, we have generated £1.3M+ revenue from 40+ clients including Google, UBS, On & Charlotte Tilbury, with an industry-leading NPS from 1000+ learners.And we’re just getting started as we gear up to build an iconic company in the $100BN leadership development market.

Niyo Hair and Beauty – The $500bn women’s hair market is still massively underserved and ripe for innovation. Customers are still getting ‘carts and horses’ to the salon and getting mediocre service. When we think about taxis, we think uber and bolt, when we think coffee we think starbucks, when we think of challenger banks, we think paystack. Niyo Hair and Beauty is who you would think of when you think of hair services and products. They are transforming the hair and beauty market by powering it up with innovative practices and technology.

Novai – Novai is on a mission to combat blindness and disability by pioneering early detection and intervention for eye and brain diseases. At the heart of Novai’s innovation is the DARC technology (Detection of Apoptosing Retinal Cells), a novel combination of a proprietary biologic and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Sociability – For more than 1 billion disabled people worldwide, poor accessibility poses a significant barrier to social inclusion, equal opportunity and quality of life. Knowing the accessibility of a venue in advance makes a world of difference. With the right planning obstacles can be overcome, stress avoided, and everyone can be included. Sociability helps businesses better appreciate which barriers they have, what problems they are creating and how to fix them.

SocialPro – SocialPro is an AI-powered tool that removes the guesswork from social media growth. It analyses a creator’s niche and delivers a personalised content plan for maximum engagement and reach. With 24/7 growth tracking and valuable insights, SocialPro advises on improving the visual and audible aspects of content to boost performance. SocialPro offers a comprehensive solution for social media success, so no matter if you are a brand or a singer, SocialPro is the way to grow.

Untangle – Untangle’s AI driven community-app helps people to navigate the emotional and logistical impacts of death by providing personalised care from peers and vetted professionals. They’ve built a community of over half a million people, and recently launched their Employee Benefits offer in partnership with the UK’s leading bereavement charity.

Vikela Armour – Vikela uses advanced 3D printing to manufacture next generation stab and ballistic protection. Our mission is to be at the forefront of 3D printing for mass manufacturing, making products that save lives and protect the world. We are focused on developing knowledge on 3D thinking and design, to inspire the next generation of innovation.

Unndoo – Unndoo.com is a multi-award winning Healthtech platform, leading the change in the £2.75bn aesthetic industry. It’s a platform that allows people in the Greater London area to search and book medically qualified, experienced, insured and vetted facial aesthetic practitioners.

Huge thank you to our Founding Partner HSBC Innovation Banking, and Supporting Parters JCDecaux, Blue Array and Microsoft. We are running the Rising Stars in collaboration with London Tech Week and UK Tech Cluster Group, without whom the event would not be possible!

Register for your ticket to the Grand Final here!

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