King’s College London: King’s entrepreneurs showcase their start-ups at London Demo Day
Five businesses from the King’s20 Accelerator, the Entrepreneurship Institute’s flagship programme, were selected to take part in this year’s London Demo Day.
Joining participants from the UCL Hatchery and Imperial Enterprise Lab, the King’s ventures pitched to an audience of 500, including students, leading investors, partners and alumni who had gathered in the Great Hall at Imperial College London.
The annual collaboration event celebrates an innovative way of introducing investors to innovation and entrepreneurial talent at London universities.
The ventures covered sectors including Retail, BioTech, Digital Health, Wellness and Fitness and CleanTech, representing the huge breadth of businesses coming out of London’s top universities.
The five ventures featured this year from King’s were:
Haule
The marketplace for vintage homeware and second-hand furniture.
Furniture is currently one of the least recycled products globally, with most of this waste ending up in landfill. Haule is creating a circular economy to reduce waste and fight ‘fast furniture’ by charging 10% commission to sellers on the sale price of items. They have recently launched a sourcing service, helping customers source specific items from their community of sellers.
Founder: Katie Barber (MA Arts and Cultural Economics)
Crossr
Making drug discovery R&D exponential.
Biological data is incredibly complex. 90% of pharmaceutical scientists can’t make sense of emerging knowledge graphs because they don’t know code. Crossr have created a no code operating system to streamline knowledge graph ingestion, visualisation, analysis and gene recommendation system build. Scientists can now conduct hypothesis to insight workflows in 10X the time 1 hour compared to 3 weeks.
Founder: Jamie Cartland (BSc Biomedical Science)
Malebox
Male fertility testing from the comfort of your own home.
Approximately 1 in 2 men are subfertile. Sperm counts have halved in the past 40 years and most men often only find out about their fertility when trying for children. Malebox has developed an at-home test that is a diagnostic tool to provide men with information about their fertility and personalised advice on how to improve, maintain or preserve it through lifestyle interventions. Malebox sell direct to consumer as well as offering an at home alternative to fertility clinics.
Founder: Becky Kay (MSc Health Professions and Related Clinical Sciences, PhD Imaging Sciences Doctor of Philosophy)
Smile
Supporting the mental health of people managing chronic physical health conditions.
There are 19 million people in the UK with a chronic physical health condition and they are three times more likely than average to develop a mental health problem. This leads to poorer physical health outcomes, reduced wellbeing and costs the NHS up to £13 billion per year. Smile’s team of clinical experts incorporate five evidenced based therapies to provide accessible, affordable mental health support tailored to the needs of this community. Their AI driven app captures data to build personalised pathways and deliver bitesize written, visual and audio content, live workshops and 1-2-1 support.
Founder: Emma Amoscato (MSc Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health)
Uwana Energy
Easily accessible solar power on credit.
Nigerians face routine power outages. Alternative energy sources, like fuel generators, either constitute a public health risk or are too expensive for the majority. Uwana Energy offers solar energy products on credit so that anyone can access clear energy for a fraction of the cost and then repay the balance over several months.
Founder: Natasha Ibori (MSc Emerging Economies and International Development)
London Demo Day will return in 2023 and will be hosted by King’s College London.