What a year it's been for Idea Factory, the Entrepreneurship Institute's flagship idea generation competition. Each year, we put the call out for the biggest, brightest and best ideas across the university and through a series of workshops, give our contestants the skills they need to make their ideas viable and scalable through entrepreneurial skills. 

This year we received over 80 entries addressing problems across healthcare, education, finance, food, fashion, and the environment. 

In addition to our expert panel of judges, we're turning to our community to nominate their pick for our inaugural People's Choice award! Simply watch our 10 finalists' quick pitches below and cast your vote here. 

The winner of the People's Choice will be announced at the Idea Factory Pitch Off on the 3rd March 2021, and will go on to receive a guaranteed £2000 in funding to make their idea a reality, 12 months of mentoring with our Head of Entrepreneurial Skills and experts-in-residence as well as a potential fast-track to a King's20 Accelerator interview.

Coolzen

Coolzen is a revolutionary medical device that provides relief for menopausal women experiencing hot flashes. It works by reacting to the onset of a hot flash and leverages a natural human physiological response to bring relief. Coolzen addresses a market where there are very few non-pharmaceutical solutions for relief from hot flashes.

- Shreya Kalyanasundaram, Faculty of Natural & Mathematical Sciences

HydroGrow

HydroGrow is an Urban sustainable hydroponics product made from a 100% recycled HDPE plastic, which allows you to grow fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers in your home. The system uses hydroponics technology, a method of growing plants without soil which uses 90% less water and has a harvesting yield 4x bigger than traditional agricultural methods. Hydrogrow aims to educate and empower communities about the carbon cycle, what climate change really is and how hydroponic agriculture in the urban sphere will help to combat these issues.

- Arthur Georges, Faculty of Arts & Humanities

Leilo

Leilo offers simple money management to families and carers of vulnerable adults recovering from addiction. Leilo is a pre-paid card with features which allows a financial guardian to access account information, such as where the primary user is spending money. The aim is to aid recovery and mitigate against the risk of relapse due to financial temptation and provide carefully tailored and regulated financial freedom to at-risk individuals while giving their loved ones and families peace of mind.

- Roxanne Stevenson-Brown, Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy

Of Colour

Of Colour is closing the skincare-race gap, initially producing SPF products designed for darker skin tones. The skincare industry has a long way to go in providing inclusivity for People of Colour, who often have a hard time finding SPF that is not extremely white on their skin. Of Colour is aiming to help fix with targeted products and sun protection to protect melanin instead of damaging it.

- Aysha Nasir, Faculty of Arts & Humanities

Petal App

Petal App is a digital platform designed to help those struggling with eating disorders to navigate their way towards a happy and healthy relationship with food by providing credible sources of information, peer-to-peer community support and access to specialist resources. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rates among psychiatric disorders and affect 1.25 million people in the UK, many of whom do not seek help or find it difficult to find reliable information or support.

- Aidana Orynbassar, Faculty of Arts & Humanities

SnapSense

SnapSense is a wound monitoring software making monitoring diabetic wounds as easy as taking a selfie! There are over 450 million patients worldwide with diabetes, a debilitating chronic disease. Around 25% of diabetic patients develop foot ulcers, responsible for 85% of amputations, causing significant distress + morbidity. Our app guides patients to snap pictures of their wound and answer a symptoms-based questionnaire that clinicians can easily review, reducing appointments, encouraging earlier recognition of wounds, and saving the patients and hospitals time and money.

- Shreya Chawla, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine

UniMate

UniMate is a grade calculator app for Uni students that allows users to track their university grades, calculate their weighted average and predict what they need to strive for in order to achieve their dream degree classification by simply inputting their grades into our app. There is no uniform way students keep track of their grades, which can impact their overall performance. Similarly, and linked to this, students are often unaware of how their University calculates their classification and often struggle to do so themselves. Our app helps solve this issue for students, from Undergraduate to Postgraduate degrees

- Charlotte Gray, King’s Business School

Uwana Energy

Uwana Energy is a digital platform that facilitates peer-to-peer microloans so low-income Nigerians can buy our solar energy systems and enjoy constant electricity. In Lagos, over 11,000 people die annually as a direct result of air pollution yet around 10m mostly live without even enough energy to charge their phones conveniently. People are eager to switch to a cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable source of energy with a financing option, but estimates suggest only 35% have access to loans.

- Oberhili Ibori, Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy

Wisdom

Wisdom is an AI-powered dental diagnostic tool that automates x-ray reporting and analysis for dentists, reducing the risk of misdiagnosis. Our software uses AI to automate x-ray reporting for the 3 most common types of dental x-rays in the UK, giving dentists more time to provide better patient care or to treat more patients. The AI software will also reduce medical errors by improving diagnostic accuracy, promoting early detection of diseases, reducing unnecessary treatments and medico-legal issues and patients will have a better quality of life and be reassured that they are receiving the right care.

- Dr Jasmine Hiu Yee Loke, Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences

YeraCups

YeraCups are sustainably made menstrual cups made with fully recyclable medical grade TPE which adapts to the body’s temperature making it a more comfortable fit. All profits from YeraCups go to Huru International, a charity that provides women in Kenya with access to menstrual pads, menstrual education and entrepreneurial training.

- Anna-Bryndís Zingsheim, King’s Business School