SETsquared Bath Innovation Centre News

Billion pound support package for innovative firms hit by coronavirus

UK businesses driving innovation and development will be helped through the coronavirus outbreak with a £1.25 billion government support package, the Chancellor announced today (20.04.20). The comprehensive package includes a new £500 million loan scheme for high-growth firms, called the Future Fund, and £750 million of targeted support for small and medium sized businesses focusing on research and development.

Over three afternoons in April expert speakers and coaches from each ERDF sector ran our first Business Acceleration Growth Hub workshop for entrepreneurs which covered a wide variety of subjects from business model design, customer insight, prototyping the business model and finance / investor perspectives.

With the ability to screen share and utilise breakout rooms, participants were able to interact with mentors and their fellow innovators.

Great feedback was received and we’ll be hosting another virtual workshop again in June!

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION!

The petition asks the council and the West of England Mayor Tim to offer support for businesses who currently aren't able to access government support.

Specifically, businesses who are located in managed spaces (like the Innovation Centre) aren't generally able to receive a £10,000 grant because they won't have previously filled out a Small Business Rates Relief form. We're asking them to do something about that and offer support to our community.

Another brilliant case study to come out of the Sustainable Technologies Business Acceleration Hub. Read about recent participants, Adaptavate and how the Hub has supported them to reach their market potential - for free!

Adaptavate have a game changing innovation – Breathaboard - a bio-composite, breathable, more renewable, lower carbon alternative to plasterboard, which is the third most widely used building material on the planet. Gypsum is closely coupled to the production and burning of coal, which is being phased out, with plasterboard directly responsible for more than 3% of the UK CO2 emissions (Maskell et al 2017).

Innovate UK would like to inform our members that if you are a recipient of an Innovate UK award and your project is being affected by COVID-19 you can apply for an extension of up to three months.

Innovate UK have created a fast track process to facilitate “no cost” time extension requests of up to three months for reasons relating to COVID-19, subject to a valid business case and normal legal and compliance requirements.

The aim of this competition is to support UK businesses to focus on emerging or increasing needs of society and industries during and following the Covid-19 pandemic. By fast-tracking innovation, the UK will be better placed to maintain employment levels, a competitive position in global markets and make the UK more resilient to similar disruption.

From an operational point of view, during these unprecedented times SETsquared Bath, will continue to support SME and start up companies through the ERDF Business Acceleration Hubs (BAH). The Sustainable Technologies BAH, Advanced Engineering BAH and Digital Innovation BAH will still continue to operate. Companies from across the West of England innovating within these sectors can continue to take advantage of the free support available through the Business Acceleration Hubs.

As we find ourselves in unprecedented times how we can keep business going as usual during these times of social distancing and inevitably isolation is something we are all working towards - we wanted to let you know that our commitment to supporting our SETsquared Bath members and business community is still at the forefront of what we do.

Bath-based Cognisess set out on a mission to eradicate the subjective biases that unconsciously yet inevitably take place during the job application process. Driven by a unique combination of data science, neuro-science, artificial intelligence and machine learning, Cognisess supports companies in making more informed, data-led human resource decisions. In order to tackle this huge issue, Cognisess aims to be the leading software platform for predictive people analytics via a single, easy-to use platform.

The programme is organised by Global No. 1 business incubator, SETsquared and this programme was designed for early stage companies innovating in the sustainable technologies sector. Expert speakers and coaches from the sector ran the course which covered a wide variety of subjects from business model design, customer insight, prototyping the business model and finance / investor perspectives.

Newport based SETsquared Bath member and early years education technology specialists Kinderly has secured a £300,000 investment to help give children a great start in life, regardless of their circumstances or need.

The award winning best in-class software tool, Kinderly Together makes it quick and easy to digitally capture the early years learning journey. It allows childcare providers to enhance parent communication. It also provides reporting and tools to better manage childcare provision by viewing developmental progress of all children at a glance with progress tracking, effective planning and reporting via a personalised dashboard.

FoodTech start-up Lux Rewards has reached its £100,000 crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube and are now overfunding. With six days to go, Lux Rewards has raised £187,630 with 215 investors.

Lux Rewards is the brainchild of James Courtney, a former University of Bath student. Lux Rewards started out as a SETsquared Bath member and with their move to Bristol have continued to shake up the restaurant, premium reward schemes and the card-linking tech scene.

The EIT Health Bridgehead programme provides support to scale-ups to validate their businesses beyond their home markets. The Bridgehead programme operates within two distinct tracks to meet the start-ups’ demands: Bridgehead Europe and Bridgehead Global. Both programmes are similar in structure but differ in organisation. Bridgehead Europe aims at helping start-ups expand their business beyond their home market into a different European country, and Bridgehead Global aims at internationalisation beyond Europe.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Enterprise Fellowships offer a leading business development and training programme for the higher education sector; enabling researchers to develop into world-class entrepreneurs. Two Big Ears, an Enterprise Fellowship alumni recently sold their company to social media giants, Facebook.

The fellowship provides a wealth of beneficial business support worth up to £90,000.