Imperial moves investor pitch event online to support startup founders

Investors and founders at an Imperial startup pitch event

Institutional and Angel investors will have the opportunity to explore new and future investment opportunities arising from Imperial College London

Institutional and Angel investors will have the opportunity to explore new and future investment opportunities arising from Imperial College London’s vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem at an online event held at 10 am on 14 May.

Investors in attendance will hear from a range of Imperial startups founded by academic researchers, students and alumni, in diverse sectors including FinTech, Life Sciences, AI, AgTech, Last Mile Logistics, MedTech, Mobility, and Energy.

Dr Govind Pindoria will introduce the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Imperial, which offers extensive support to startups and founders, from pre-accelerator programmes, through mentoring, to fundraising.

The event will close with a talk from Parkwalk Advisors, the manager of the Imperial College Innovation Fund, introducing the £2 million co-investment fund currently being raised to invest in startups emerging from the Imperial College London community.

Dr Govind Pindoria, Associate Director of Startup Formation, Imperial Enterprise Division, said: “This is the third investor pitch event we’ve run since Imperial took the lead on technology transfer in 2019. The first two led to numerous introductions and in-depth discussions between founders and investors with every startup receiving interest from multiple investors and over 50% gaining investments as a direct result. We look forward to continuing that trend. The switch to an online event also provides us with an opportunity to follow-up immediately with members of the Imperial Investor Network.”

The Investor Pitch event will feature presentations from 10 companies that have come out of Imperial’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. These include:

• Zyme Biosciences – Professor Molly Stevens FREng FRS will present the QuickZyme rapid point of care test for early COVID-19 detection.
• hydroCotton – a startup helping fashion companies reduce their environmental impact. hydroCotton uses data-driven agriculture and controlled environments to grow radically more sustainable cotton in a more transparent way.
• ApTap –ApTap is building white-labelled financial management APIs that allow banks to offer bill management tools to their customers. ApTap is a next generation affiliate marketplace, that allows banking customers to cancel, compare, switch or sign up to services all within their banking app.
• Bumblebee - Bumblebee is commercialising the only wireless charging solution that delivers the performance required for widespread uptake across multiple markets. Focusing initially on the mid-power and lightweight micro-mobility market, Bumblebee’s patented load independent, high frequency inductive power transfer (HF-IPT) technology operates efficiently within a large range of separation and misalignments, so precise positioning of the device is unnecessary.

Interested investors can sign up for the event on Eventbrite. Investors keen to remain updated on the future pipeline of opportunities from Imperial may also sign up the Imperial Investor Network.

Dr Simon Hepworth, Imperial’s Director of Enterprise, said:

“I’m delighted to see that our team has adapted and brought the Investor Pitch event online. We understand from speaking to investors and our startup teams that these events are extremely valuable: for investors, as a way to engage closely with our research and innovation ecosystem; and for our startups, as a way to test their proposition directly with investors – as well as potentially raising funding.”

Angel and venture investors who join Imperial's Investor Network will be invited to access a data room after the event that will contain additional content on Imperial startups currently seeking investment, as well as companies at an earlier stage of their journey. The data room will be available until 5 pm BST on Wednesday 20 May and will provide the opportunity to book times to follow up with the startups directly.