Twelve startups plan to grow their customer-base to over 10 million people by the end of 2019 after they became the first cohort to graduate from the ScaleUp Hub – a programme supporting the development of smart city technologies designed to address key urban challenges in the UK and beyond.
Launched in November 2018 by Wayra UK, the innogy Innovation Hub and the Transport Systems Catapult, a team of experts have helped accelerate the journeys of startups developing technologies in areas such as future energy, urban solutions and customer experience.
Using their direct connections to ease the startups’ transition into the UK market, the Innogy Innovation Hub and Wayra partnership has seen the cohorts’ collective customer-base grow from 2.5 million to 6.1 million in just four months. The aim now is to increase that number by a further 67 per cent following the completion of 18 trials involving Telefónica, several high-profile corporates and a number of Government agencies.
Pedro Ruao, CEO, Omniflow, one of the participating companies, said: “During the Wayra UK programme we raised EUR 2.5m and were introduced to a number of strategic partners that we built relationships with, some of which may lead to long-term collaborations that will benefit the business and our customers. We would strongly recommend the programme to other ambitious businesses.”
Gary Stewart, director of Wayra UK and Telefónica Open Future in the UK, said: “ScaleUp Hub proves what can be achieved when two companies embrace the values associated with open innovation. As a result of the programme, innogy Innovation Hub and Wayra have supported the growth of new market leaders in emerging smart city technologies that will enhance the lives of over 10 million people, worldwide.
“This swell in customer activity, which has generated £13m for startups to date, hasn’t gone unnoticed. Since the start of the programme, the cohort has raised £6m in third-party investment, with £52m more in the pipeline.”
Annemie Ress, managing director for innogy Innovation Hub, said: “We strongly believe that the creation of alliances and networks is key in unlocking innovation and delivering startup success.
“ScaleUp Hub provides ample proof of this, with the participating startups on course to quadruple their revenues by the end of the year. The UK is the perfect place for innovative to thrive with an open, forward-looking business and investor community combined with a huge potential market.”
The businesses graduating the programme include:
- Beerides: BeeRides has setup an efficient and user-friendly car sharing platform and earns most of its revenue by charging a commission on the rental transactions on its platform.
- Calipsa: Calipsa offers a cloud based platform based on Deep Learning technology that offers a 50% reduction in false alarms for Monitoring Stations.
- Citygo: Getting home quickly is no longer a luxury.
- DoDo: DoDo offers a same day logistics service which simplifies the life of both customers and companies by providing a marketplace for new business opportunities.
- Enerbrain: Enerbrain makes dumb buildings smart. Improve the financial productivity and comfort of your buildings without modifying any of your existing systems.
- Humanising Autonomy: Humanising Autonomy improves safety and efficiency of autonomous mobility systems through better understanding of human behaviour across cities.
- HUMN.ai: By-the-minute insurance for rideshare drivers.
- Libryo: Libryo is a web-based, context specific tool that enables users at any organisation to know the applicable legal obligations they face in any situation.
- Omniflow: Smart energy platform powered by wind and solar with integrated energy storage for IoT applications.
- Placense: Placense‘s data analytics solution, ‘vectorsense’, provides real-time metrics.
Pre-acceleration:
- Shine: Shine creates the future of people powering people. Shine’s innovative software enables customers to actively take part in the undeniable journey towards de-centralised energy production and consumption.
- Share&Charge: Share&Charge is a decentralised protocol for electric vehicle charging, transactions, and data sharing – enabling companies to offer a seamless, smart and secure charging experience.