Anglia Ruskin startup ambitions grow as fellowship seed funds three new businesses
The final three companies to benefit from Anglia Ruskin's £50k Enterprise Fellowship Scheme have been named as Microgenius, Light Blue Software and Whey Forward Health.
So that's cleantech/social enterprise, software and healthcare (respectively) together with advertising - Streetsight received £10k in September - showing that Anglia Ruskin's entrepreneurial activity really is focused on reaching out to all sectors as promised.
Cabume broke news of the fund which comes from a private benefactor and is being run by the Centre for Enterprise Development and Research (Cedar) in May this year.
Since then the university has taken a number of further steps in its efforts to build a reputation as a centre for entrepreneurial excellence, such as the Big Pitch competition and creation of a campus-based incubator which is expected to launch in the first quarter of next year.
Following the Streetsight selection (a company who places advertising on street telecoms cabinets, annoyingly prompting the question, 'why didn't I think of that?) Cedar listened to a number of pitches before settling on three, splitting it £18k to Whey, £12k to Light blue and £10k to Microgenius.
Microgenius' Emily Mackay will spend the money on specialist legal advice to see if her social enterprise web site dedicated to partnering potential funders of micro generation projects such as solar panels with potential hosts of the installations is actually workable in law on the site.
While Mackay's company is still in the planning stage, Hamish Symington and Tom Catchesides of Light Blue have been pushing their photography business management software for three years, are on version three and have what Symington says is a sizeable market in the UK and worldwide.
"We've built a reputation for both top-notch software and excellent customer support," said Symington. "We're constantly developing our software to add new features and bring it to a wider audience, and the Cedar funding and mentoring will be invaluable for the plans we have in 2012, helping us to speed our product development and bring other people on board."
Joe Faulkner-Edwards of Whey Forward, which featured at Meerkats and Avatars last week, will use the money to launch its first product. The company has taken advantage of new whey processing techniques to develop an advanced nutritional supplement which can aid the production of the antioxidant Glutathione, which has been shown to enhance immune function, promote bone-mineral density and reduce tiredness and fatigue.
A jubilant Faulkner-Edwards said: "Entering the Cedar Enterprise Fellowship Scheme was one of my best decisions! Obviously, this financial input will give our product launch the healthy boost it needs, but perhaps more importantly, the unrivalled level of advice and expertise offered as a result will help me grow the business to where we would like it to be.
"We intend to grow Whey Forward Health Industries Ltd into a successful and thriving enterprise and exciting developments are already underway for future products."
The judging team for Cedar included former St John's Innovation Centre director, Walter Herriot, TTP CEO, Peter Taylor, Cedar director, Professor Lester Lloyd-Reason and Dr Geoffrey Butlin of TrancenData Europe.
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