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30 September 2020

Meet the Ventures: King's20 2020-21

Meet the best and brightest high-potential startups joining the Entrepreneurship Institute's King's20 Accelerator for 2020-21.

King20 virtual launch

The King's20 Accelerator is the Entrepreneurship Institute's flagship programme supporting the 20 brightest and highest potential ventures from King’s to scale to new heights. 

Over the next 12 months, the new cohort of King's20 ventures will undertake an intensive programme to accelerate their first stage of growth, gain access to leading expert mentorship, investment opportunities, coaching and the opportunity to develop the 7 skills of an entrepreneurial mindset to aid their success.

To date, our previous cohorts have generated almost £17million in revenue and raised over £20million in investment, creating over 400 jobs for the UK economy. We can’t wait the see the positive impact of Cohort V over the next 12 months and look forward to sharing updates over the forthcoming months.

If you are an investor, with an active interest in early-stage startups or interested in meeting our ventures – we would be delighted to connect. Please do get in contact with our Investor Relations Manager, Francesca Guerrera at francesca.guerrera@kcl.ac.uk

I am delighted to welcome this year’s extraordinary King’s20 ventures to the Entrepreneurship Institute and thoroughly looking forward to working with exceptional founders over the next 12 months. In June 2020, we saw an outstanding 190+ applications from ambitious founders and entrepreneurial enthusiasts with a passion to create their own careers and strive to develop some of the most innovative solutions worldwide. This year will be a celebration of the exceptional entrepreneurial leaders that kickstarted their journeys as part of the King’s20 and we can’t wait for you to be part of our celebration.

Holly Knower, Head of Ventures at the Entrepreneurship Institute

Advicely

Advicely is an automation software radically supporting SMEs with digital advertising needs. We serve SME owners, with digital advertising needs. Our software offers our customer the ability to advertise at a very high quality, but without the cost, time and knowledge commitment, by automating the advertising workflow. This includes using an initial data sweep of the client to assess the best type of advertising campaign to run.

Lead Entrepreneur: Amar Mehta (MSc Neuroscience 2020)

Banana Scoops

Banana Scoops is banana-based, vegan ice cream made from natural and plant-based ingredients. We serve young families and healthy eaters, who are craving healthier and more nutritious desserts. Our ice cream offers our customers a healthy alternative to traditional ice cream by using natural and plant-based ingredients whilst avoiding preservatives, artificial ingredients and sugars.

Lead entrepreneur: Jess Salamanca (BSc Business Management, 2016)

BEAUTY NOIR

BEAUTYNOIR (BN) is an online aggregator for Afro-Caribbean women, designed to find, book and review beauty services. We serve Afro-Caribbean women who are looking to find a trustworthy beauty service provider whatever the occasion, price-point or location. Our website offers our customer a simple way to find, book and review beauty services in one place using our ever-expanding directory of both established and emerging beauty service providers and our custom booking and review system.

Lead entrepreneur: Naomi Cave-Brown-Cave (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery – MBBS 2023)

bundle

bundle aims to help businesses become fully remote yet highly efficient. We serve SMEs wanting to go remote. Our platform offers our customer a unified remote workspace, centralising business tools, maintaining and improving social interactions between employees and both on-boarding and off-boarding users quickly. We achieve this by enabling companies to clearly define what tools they use, evaluating the combine costs and offering an enterprise tool marketplace.

Lead entrepreneur:  Anisa Qureshi (BSc Mathematics and Computer Science, 2017)

Eczamine

Eczamine offers eczema sufferers the power to take greater control of their condition and enjoy a better quality of life. We serve people suffering from eczema who want to track their symptoms and predict flare-ups before they occur. Our AI-supported digital health application offers our users the power to take greater control of their condition and enjoy a better quality of life through our severity classifier, predictive algorithm, and symptom tracker.

Lead entrepreneur: Shefali Singh (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery – MBBS 2021)  

Grandnanny

Grandnanny helps parents out by finding them a safe, local older person to look after their children after school. We serve parents who are looking for local, reliable childcare and older neighbours who are looking for rewarding, local employment. Our matching platform and payroll service offers parents the reliable, long-term, local childcare they dream of by recruiting and training local older neighbours to provide part-time childcare.

Lead entrepreneur: Adele Aitchison (MSc Gerontology 2020 & BA English Literature, 2013)

Hard Yards Sports Ltd.

Hard Yard Sports Ltd uses innovative materials and player-first design to make advanced, lightweight protection for the modern cricket player. We serve cricket players, who need advanced, cutting-edge protective wear to meet the increasingly serious risks of the modern game. Our innovative cricket protective wear offers our customers enhanced protection that allows them to maximise their performance without fear of significant injury by using technology-driven materials and player-first product design.

Lead entrepreneur: Dr Harry Carr (MSc Clinical Neuroscience, 2016)

Kami

Kami is a digital coach that helps hew and expectant parents with their most important job – raising children. We serve parents transitioning to parenthood. The first 1000 days are crucial in determining family outcomes. Kami’s platform offers a digital coaching companion that helps parents become their child’s best first teacher. Combining the power of human expertise, big data and machine learning provides accessible and affordable instant support, then long-term access to personalised care for parents.

Lead entrepreneur: Erika Brodnock (Visiting Research Fellow, Artificial Intelligence 2020)

Loma

Ask Loma is an easy and money-saving way to lower your carbon footprint. We serve Gen-Z and Millennials who want to buy more sustainably but struggle due to a lack of disposable income and subsequent challenges. Our search platform offers users an easy and money-saving way to lower their carbon footprint by making the entire secondhand market easy to navigate and searchable in one simple click.

Lead entrepreneur: Joseph Undaloc and Thomas Valderrama (BA Liberal Arts, 2020)  

Mai Fresh

Mai Fresh is a logistics company which aims to bring you specialist East Asian products. We serve East Asian international students, families and office workers, who currently do not have a convenient and simple way of accessing the goods that they would easily find in their home country. Mai Fresh delivery offers our customers convenience, simplicity and ease through a website connecting them with retailers where they can get all items, they need to make them feel at home.

Lead entrepreneur: Victor Lim (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery – MBBS 2023)  

Malebox

Malebox is the first comprehensive at home male fertility testing service offering men a full semen analysis from the comfort of their own home. We serve young men & couples who want a family in the future. Malebox offers our customer the first comprehensive at home male fertility test. We empower men to take control of their fertility health, by educating them to make informed lifestyle decisions to optimise and track their fertility health.

Lead entrepreneur: Rebecca Kay (PhD Imaging Science, 2020)

MediGate

MediGate are the medical Google, a directory to all courses and conferences so you no longer have to spend countless of hours searching online. We serve medical professionals who are required to attend courses and conferences whilst also logging a portfolio for career progression. Our product, MediGate, offers our customers a reliable source to seek career progressing opportunities freeing up time that is otherwise spent on personal administration. We offer a platform to search for opportunities with a personal account to log all milestones.

Lead entrepreneur: Dr Ahamodur Choudhury (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery – MBBS 2018)

Metadvice

Metadvice is software that combines the knowledge from leading hospitals and universities and uses AI to help doctors and pharmaceutical companies make the best possible decisions about taking care of patients with hard-to-treat disease. We serve doctors and pharma, who struggle to keep up with the avalanche of new incoming information about diagnosis and therapy of patients with complex disease. Our decision support platform offers our user precise, refined diagnosis and therapy recommendations, and rationale for those, by using neural networks to extract information from the latest clinical guidelines and patient data.

 Lead entrepreneur: Natalie Pankova 

Neso Technologies

Neso Technologies is creating affordable portable headphones, measuring brain health and activity We serve health care professionals and patients, who would benefit from a faster and more accessible diagnosis of mental health disorders. Our headphone offers our customers a better way of diagnosing and monitoring mental health disorders by using a portable device that is able to reveal a fast and cheap diagnosis.

Lead entrepreneur: Navid Banafshe (PhD Neuroscience, 2020)

Remarx

Remarx is modelled around the concept of social networking, like LinkedIn or Facebook, but for academics, students and professionals. We serve university students who need access to career enriching opportunities; and university academics who need student support on their projects. Remarx help current students find and complete projects to advance their careers via our projects database. Remarx helps university academics by allowing them to independently post opportunities and form diverse teams. Both groups benefit from our bespoke project management system.

Lead entrepreneur: Deeban Ratneswaran (BSc Psychology 2009, Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery – MBBS 2012, PhD candidate and research fellow)  

Smart Thinking

Smart Thinking is the first organisation to bring together policy recommendations of all UK think tanks into one place. We serve companies and policymakers who want easy access to policy; jobseekers who want to work for a think tank; and the sector as a whole who increasingly want an industry voice. Our platform offers our customers access to policy, networking and job opportunities by access to our network, regular newsletters and a large library of reports, events and job opportunities.

Lead entrepreneur: Emily Redding (Guy's and St Thomas' staff member)

Sojo

Sojo is an easy and hassle-free way to get their clothes altered and repaired by connecting users with local Seamster businesses with just a few simple clicks. We serve ethically conscious fashion consumers who want to shop second hand without sizing restrictions and also make the clothes they own last longer. Our app/website and delivery service offer our customers an easy and hassle-free way to get their clothes altered and repaired by connecting them with the services of local Seamster businesses with just a few simple clicks.

Lead entrepreneur: Josephine Philips (BSc Physics and Philosophy, 2020) 

Verdn

Verdn lets online stores be more sustainable. We serve e-commerce businesses who are looking to tap into conscious consumerism. Our service, Verdn, offers our customers an effortless way to be more sustainable through a 5-minute software integration that lets them attach high-value environmental impacts directly onto product sales.

Lead entrepreneur: Christopher Mjelde (BSc Business Management, 2014)

Virtuoso

Virtuoso is a platform where medical students can learn how to practice medicine, with interactive videos, clinical scenarios and chatbots. We serve Medical Students, who need resources to bridge the gap between theory and practice in medicine. Our platform offers our customer immersive and interactive content by using augmented virtual reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Lead entrepreneur: Alexander Zargaran (Academic Foundation Doctor at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London)

Zauber Music

Zauber Music supports music learners in China, who need fundamental Western Classical Music knowledge. We serve music learners in China, who need fundamental Western Classical Music knowledge. Our online courses offer our customers high-quality, reliable and structured learning, using pre-recorded videos and written content.

Lead entrepreneur: Lei Ping (BA Musicology, 2014)