Funding Lab - Introducing the April 2023 cohort

Funding Lab is our flagship founders programme. A fast-paced, two-part course for founders looking to raise investment from a VC. It is designed to help early-stage founders tune their pitch and prepare for a raise with straight-talking, actionable learnings direct from our VC investors and industry specialists from our Studio team. We received over 400 applications for the programme this year, which we then shortlisted to 13 founders who were invited to join the cohort.

The first day of Funding Lab will be taking place on Wednesday 19th April. We'll be sharing more insights from the day soon, but in the meantime, check out the cohort below.

Stephen Donvan, founder of Agen.

SaaS.

Agen develops and delivers SaaS predictive maintenance solutions to industrial businesses. Their goal is to increase industrial machine health and risk mitigation, whilst leveraging predictive maintenance. Their IoT wireless vibration sensor solution identifies machine anomalies and transmits data to their cloud analysis platform, alerting and enabling customers to rapidly access data from anywhere in order to increase reliability, availability and efficiency. Continual improvement through AI and Machine learning will drive incremental insights and value.

Mobeen Kosar, founder of ConsoneAI.

Applied AI.

ConsoneAI, is an AI driven comparable platform predicting toxicity of novel compounds in multiple animal species and humans. Their aim is to reduce the requirements of animal testing and risk in drug development.

Beenish Luqman, founder of DiRibona.

SaaS.

DiRibona is a soil health startup, empowering the soil to heal itself. They used advanced sequencing technology for precision-based soil analysis to then develop custom-based biofertilizers.

Gautham Krishnadas, founder of Dtime.

Applied AI.

Existing search engines (e.g. Google) and data search engines (e.g. datasetsearch.research.google.com, data.gov.uk) have very limited coverage of published data in the world. Because of this, Data Users struggle to find the data (open/commercial) that they need and Data Providers are left in the dark with no insights on how people engage with their data.

Dtime has developed Dtechtive that discovers the data other search engines cannot reach using intelligent and scalable techniques. Dtechtive also uniquely connects Data Providers with Data Users in a marketplace-like ecosystem.

Laurent Christen, founder of Embley.

SaaS.

Laurent believes that marketplace operations are broken. Merchants and sellers operate their marketplace commerce businesses without an end-to-end view, running their operational processes over dozens of systems that don’t interact well with each other. Embley is a unique Marketplace Automation Platform that helps marketplace businesses market and sell products better and faster. Embley combines the most advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Process Mining.

Sebastian Andraos, co-founder of HAL Robotics.

Robotics.

Manufacturing is increasingly having to deal with variable products and processes, due to the need to respond to customer requirements (mass-customisation/personalisation) or because defects appear in unique locations on every part. HAL Robotics enables the automation of variable, complex and uncommon tasks with robots through their automated robot reprogramming software.

Kimberly Dickson, founder of HyperTribe.

Applied AI.

HyperTribe exists to bring a safe and inclusive space for musicians looking to grow their careers, focusing on growing their fanbase and reach. They help 99% of musicians to increase their earning potential by providing an AI data-driven learning journey for all musicians regardless of genre, location and gender.

David Atkinson, founder of Lip Video.

Applied AI.

David and the Lip Video team are on a mission to disrupt the $60 billion translation industry with AI technology never seen before. They are modernising the 60 year old video dubbing and translation technology to empower everyone on earth to speak every language on earth, within seconds. Lip is a software that allows you to upload a video, translate it to another language then manipulate the facial features of the person on screen so they look like they are speaking a new language. Check out more here.

Sneha Bajpai, CEO of RemedyRx.

SaaS.

Imagine a world where chronic disease management is personalised, precise, and proactive. RemedyRx does just that by creating a human health digital twin from multi-modal data, enabling a continuous feedback loop between patients and healthcare providers. This technology aggregates multi-modal data from a wide range of sources, including wearables, electronic health records, genomics, and social determinants of health. This data is then used to create a digital twin of each patient, a virtual replica of their unique health profile.

Jitesh Halai, founder of Vipra Technology.

Applied AI/ Web3

Vipra Technology is on a mission to create efficiencies in the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain through AI and Blockchain. They are building a comprehensive suite of services that provide transparency and visibility into monitoring batches and shipments through a single unified digital network.  The platform provides precise real-time information on pharmaceutical batches such as product temperature throughout the supply chain or the status of regulatory documentation or detail on the packaging and serialisation.

Basheir Hashim, co-founder of Whizle.

Applied AI.

Professionals and teams consume tonnes of educational content online (YouTube educational videos, courses, blogs) in addition to sources within their organisations such as knowledge guides. However, they tend to forget a great deal and struggle to recall it in the right context to address a challenge in a project or a task. Whizle solves the problem of sharing (and improving) business and technical knowledge for professionals and teams by sharing bitesize content in a social feed and using AI to convert it to actionable notes, quizzes and flashcards. The result? Passive watching becomes active learning and applied expertise.

Simon Barry, CEO of Wordiser.

Applied AI.

English language learning is expensive, especially In-person learning. Current apps and tech don't teach to the required standards. Wordiser are creating a ChatGPT-style app using their own in-house AI to revolutionise English language learning.

Did you miss the applications for Funding Lab this time? Make sure you're subscribed to our Forward Fortnightly newsletter, where we'll be announcing the next programme. In the meantime, don't forget that you can apply for our founder's Office Hours here or apply to receive 1-2-1 growth and marketing advice, via Growth Spurts here.

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