Innovation and entrepreneurship praised by investors and industry gurus
Five new technology businesses walked away as winners at Thursday’s finals of our Discovering Start-Ups 2011 competition run on behalf of Cambridge Wireless.
Advanced Balance Systems, Blu-Wireless Technology, Mindings, Proxama and Qiqqa were selected from 20 start-ups invited to pitch their innovative wireless technologies and business plans to 25 leading venture capitalists, angels and industry investors. Senior representatives from companies including Microsoft, RIM, Nokia, Qualcomm Ventures, Innovacom, Broadcom, Orange, O2 Telefonica and ARM were there to judge the finalists and provide expert advice.
The five winners were presented with their awards at Queens’ College in Cambridge during a special Cambridge Wireless dinner. Advanced Balance Systems has developed Walkasins, a wearable medical device that reduces the risk of falls in people with balance problems; Blu-Wireless is developing low-cost multi-Gigabit semiconductor WiFi products for next generation consumer electronics devices; Mindings has developed an app that helps connects families and friends through a digital photo-frame or similar device that displays pictures, message and reminders; Proxama is pioneering near field communications and contactless technology for marketing and payments applications; and Qiqqa is software that helps researchers manage and extract maximum value from their research materials.
We were pleased that three of the winners attended our widely acclaimed pitching training – just think how embarrassing this could have been.
In addition to the prestigious Cambridge Wireless Discovering Start-Ups trophies, the winners receive £2,000 each along with free business and consultancy services from companies including Alliantus.
They also have the opportunity to present their new technologies and business visions to 300+ leading wireless industry delegates from over 20 countries at the prestigious 2012 Future of Wireless International Conference next June. Alliantus is also proud to be providing support for this event.
“The quality of entrants shows that innovation and entrepreneurship is clearly very much alive,” said Clennell Collingwood, Investment Director at TTP Ventures. “It was difficult for us to pick out five winners and we are confident that all the Discovering Start-Up winners and many of the other finalists will go on to make important contributions to the wireless industry.”
“All the finalists had a unique opportunity to pitch to a dream line up of business angels, VCs and corporate investors with years of experience of spotting winners,” said Soraya Jones, CEO of Cambridge Wireless. “The support from the judges, sponsors, Cambridge Wireless members and entrants has been excellent and reflects the level of expertise, encouragement and business infrastructure that exists to nurture and help drive the success of innovative start ups.”
“Now in its second year, Discovering Start-Ups is supported by the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) and sponsored by Microlease, Neondrum, Rohde and Schwarz, S-Tech Insurance Services, Dorsey and Whitney and Alliantus. Other organisations backing the Cambridge Wireless Discovering Start-Ups initiative include: Avidity IP, Business Link, Cambridge Network, Cambridge University, CamtechNet, Connected Cambridge, Enterprise Europe Network, Google, IdeaSpace, Innovation Martlesham, Nesta, One Nucleus, St John’s Innovation Centre and Survive & Thrive.
“Discovering Start-Ups has once again been a great success and were delighted to support the initiative to encourage, inspire and recognise the next generation of technology entrepreneurs,” said Kevin Coleman, Managing Director of Alliantus and Project Director.
A full list of judges and entrants can be seen here
About the winners
Advanced Balance Systems
Walkasins(TM), is a wearable medical device that helps reduce the risk of falls in people with balance problems by up to 50%. One in three over 65 will sustain a fall-related injury at great personal and economic cost. Walkasins works by providing vibrotactile biofeedback to augment or replace impaired balance sensation and is a new approach to solving this serious problem.
Blu-Wireless Technology
Blu-Wireless Technology is a fabless semiconductor company developing low cost multi-Gigabit WiFi products set to become a core component of tomorrow’s consumer electronics devices. The unique single chip 60 GHz transceiver being developed will be of significantly reduced cost and power with emphasis on manufacturability when compared to the anticipated competing products. The product will allow mobile operators to offload cloud based video data from their networks by the near instantaneous syncing to portable platforms with very low battery usage. Demonstrations of >2Gbps data transfers have already been made to Japanese customers.
Mindings
Mindings connects families by enabling rich connections – anyone with a mobile phone can share meaningful moments with their family members. Personal captioned photos, text messages, calendar reminders, Facebook content and much more appear instantly on a digital photo frame they don’t even need to touch. Mindings is an Android App that can run on a number of often-inexpensive internet-connected digital tablets and devices. The content – perhaps a holiday photograph, a reminder of a doctor’s appointment, or a just a spontaneous ‘Thinking about you’ SMS text message – cycles through without the recipient ever having to touch the device.
Proxama Ltd
Proxama is a specialist in developing near-field communication (NFC) and contactless technology. With the recent acquisition of proximity marketing company, Hypertag, Proxama is in a unique position to offer expertise in all areas of proximity and mobile marketing. Proxama worked alongside MasterCard Worldwide to create an end-to-end payment solution, and has recently signed a partnership agreement with Nokia to develop NFC applications for the new generation of smartphones. With extensive experience in smartcard, mobile and NFC technology, Proxama has a passion to bring NFC to people in a way that optimises experience while concealing the technology.
Qiqqa
Qiqqa, pronounced ‘quicker’, is software that helps researchers manage and extract maximum value from their research materials. Combining innovative tools with powerful natural language processing, Qiqqa lets researchers cope with the avalanche of papers and information that their research involves. Qiqqa helps them focus on the important facts, discover related material and improve recall. Students love Qiqqa because it’s free, but the software has applications in industry too. Qiqqa Premium brings additional features, expanded web storage, group collaboration, and no advertising. People go to Google to search, Facebook to socialise and Amazon to read. People go to Qiqqa to learn.