Angela Logan, February 12, 2020 5 min read
After an incredible competition culminating in tonight’s Grand Final – and with an impeccably high standard of entrants – we are excited to announce the 10 winners of Rising Stars 2.0.
Esme Caulfield, Competitions Lead, Tech Nation, commented: “It’s incredibly exciting to see how the Tech Nation Rising Stars competition has grown in the last year. The standard of companies from all parts of the UK has been impressive at every stage. I’m looking forward to following the winners’ future successes and continuing to support them in their growth journey.”
The 10 winners represent the most exciting and innovative early-stage tech companies in the country, with the 33 regional finalists coming from every corner of the UK.
One of our judges Jacqueline de Rojas, President of techUK, commented: “As we face explosive shifts in technology, platforms and fast moving markets, we must look outwards not inwards towards those who embrace the dynamic shifts in the way we embrace our digital future. What we have seen today changes the definition of what flexibility and being quick to change means. I’m excited and optimistic about the contribution they can make to what comes next… #TechMatters.”
All 22 finalists pitched to our esteemed panel of judges and crowd of over 200 investors, accelerators, entrepreneurs and corporate leaders. The judging panel was made up of Amali de Alwis, MD, Microsoft for Startups UK, Adam Kamani, CEO KM Capital, Kamani Property Group and Co-Founder of PrettyLittleThing, Ed Prior, Tech Investment Banker, GP Bullhound, Jacqueline de Rojas, President, techUK, Denise Xifara, Co-Founder, GMG Ventures and Michael Stothard, Editor, Sifted.
Amali de Alwis, MD, Microsoft for Startups UK, commented: “It’s fantastic to see so many incredible companies among this year’s Rising Stars. They are an incredible representation of the innovation and talent we have here in the UK, and delighted that we at Microsoft are able to join them in celebrating their success.”
The prize package is aimed at helping our winners grow, scale and build their networks. It includes a business plan diagnostic, delivered by accounting and business advisory firm, BDO, pitch training and coaching by Sunderland Software City and speaking opportunities, thought leadership and press through the Tech Nation network.
It also includes a range of complimentary services from our partners, including a TLT Legalsifter subscription with onboarding, a Microsoft Advertising coupon worth £200 and Azure credits of $1500, a complimentary annual subscription to Soldo and Xero, and recruitment process analysis, reporting and recommendations by Talent Works International.
Adam Kamani, Partner, KM Capital, commented: “At KM Capital, we’re always looking out for the country’s great, new emerging tech start-ups, so it’s been a great honour to be on the judging panel of the Tech Nation Rising Stars awards tonight. The high calibre and out-of-the-box approach shown by the nominees has been really inspiring to see and I wish them all well in their journeys and development over the next year.”
With previous Rising Stars winners including companies such as SeedLegals who were recently announced as one of the companies joining Upscale, our programme for the fastest scaling companies in the UK, we can’t wait to see what’s in store for this year’s winners.
So, without further ado, these are the 10 winners of Rising Stars 2.0.
London | Fintech | @ClearGlassL
ClearGlass is a digital intermediary between asset managers and pension funds. It collects underlying costs and performance data from asset managers and helps pension funds decide which is the best fund to invest in for their members.
Truro | Digital Entertainment | @quizkit
Codices Interactive provides viewers with a live interactive video platform, enabling any broadcaster to create interactive shows. Its first product is now the most used gameshow creation tool on the Twitch platform, with 1,000+ monthly active broadcasters and 300,000 unique monthly viewers.
London | Tech for Good | @hypdev
CoGrammar operates the largest coding education provider in Africa – HyperionDev. Through this, they source, select, train, and integrate full-time code reviewers from top African tech talent. This allows Western companies to affordably assess developers and technical team quality, whilst creating hundreds of jobs in African countries.
Cambridge | Devices & IoT | @FoundriesIO
Foundries.io is addressing security and device management for IoT and Edge devices. FoundriesFactory is a self-service cloud solution that provides turnkey services to develop, secure, deploy and maintain embedded IoT and Edge compute products. They enable secure IoT devices and provide lifetime software maintenance at a fraction of current costs.
Edinburgh | Tech for Good | @neatebox
Tackling personal loneliness and communication, the Neatebox “Welcome” platform removes barriers and promotes empathetic relationships between consumers and customer service teams, promoting real societal change and heralding a new age of understanding and communication.
Birmingham | Ecommerce & Marketplace | @shopperdotcom
Shopper.com is a community driven global marketplace for online and offline voucher codes, covering thousands of e-commerce sites. It automatically applies the best value voucher code at checkout in one click for both mobile and desktop devices.
Southampton | SaaS | Sparkbox.co
Working in the retail and fashion space, Sparkbox uses machine learning to reduce stock, improve profitability, and prevent over-discounting by optimising prices. Their AI helps retail teams leverage their data, understand the impact of pricing decisions and make the most of the inventory they own.
Glasgow | Healthtech & Biotech | @TMedicines
Talking Medicines captures the digital voice of the patient, aggregating it into patterns of behaviours and commercialising it to brand managers in pharmaceutical companies through subscription access. They put patient centricity at the core of what they do, aiming to improve outcomes of medicines.
Manchester | SaaS | @tootootofficial
tootoot is award-winning software that supports the psychological safety and wellbeing of individuals within education, sport and the workplace. tootoot provides a way for individuals to raise a concern to their organisation with complete confidentiality.
Cardiff | AI | @wbb_ai
We Build Bots delivers AI powered automation to the public sector, helping organisations deliver better, faster and cheaper citizen services. Leveraging bots, voice and conversational analytics, they help the public sector make better use of the data they collect, making it more predictive and more productive.
As well as our 10 Rising Stars, we also named the winners of our Spotlight awards.
First up, the BDO Digital Disruptor Award, which went to Urban Chain, who are using blockchain and AI to make utility bills the cheapest they can be. Congratulations also to our runners up IMGeospatial and Foundries.io.
The Microsoft Diversity and Inclusion Award, who was presented by our judge Amali de Alwis, went to Pickr. Our runners-up were InsurTechnix and Know You More.
The Soldo Moonshot Award for the most mind-blowing application was awarded to Talking Medicines, and well done to runners-up Filmily and Resooma.
The Talent Works Inspiring Leadership award was given to Jo Halliday from Talking Medicines, with runners up Gavin Neate from Neatebox and Sonu Bubna from Shopper.com.
Congratulations to Pitchbooking, who won the People’s Choice award.
And finally, the TLT Zebra Award for those working to provide positive societal impact as well as profit went to Neatebox. With runners up Tootoot and Pitchbooking.
As always, we’d like to thank our Rising Stars sponsors BDO Drive, Microsoft, Soldo, Talent Works International and TLT, for their valued ongoing support.
