The competition, organised by KPMG’s Emerging Giants practice, saw regional pitching competitions take place in across the UK to find 16 outstanding scaleup businesses who are doing something truly disruptive in the technology space.
At a pitching competition held in London’s City Hall and opened by Deputy Mayor for Business Rajesh Aggrawal, the 16 finalists were given three minutes to pitch their business before being challenged to a series of questions from a judging panel which included Eman Martin-Vignerte from BOSCH, Janet Coyle from London & Partners and Cilia Kanellopoulos from Vodafone Group.
VividQ is a deep tech software company with world-leading expertise in 3D holography. Based in Cambridge and London, the team has over 60 expert engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists from the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford and St Andrews who have solved key technology barriers in the adoption of holographic display for mass commercial application. The business currently offers patented software to enable the adoption of holographic display in AR/VR headsets/smartglasses, automotive head-up displays, and consumer electronics. They are planning to have 10 million products in circulation by 2023.
Commenting on the competition, Bina Mehta who chairs KPMG’s Emerging Giants Centre of Excellence said: “VividQ is an exciting business, with a very strong team of highly skilled people behind them and fast growth potential. They stood out from the crowd for creating a technology which is highly commercial and doing something really innovative and different. The judges were impressed with their potential to scale their business and their international aspirations and concluded they had a good chance at becoming a future unicorn. They are fantastic representatives of what is coming out of the UK’s tech community, which is consistently producing these hidden gems who are doing great things.”
Following the pitching competition, an additional five of the 16 finalists were awarded special recognition for their innovative technologies. The five highlighted businesses were : Edinburgh based Intelligent Growth Solutions, Glasgow based ClinSpec Dx, London based Perlego Books, Bristol based Rovco and Oxford based Navenio.
Tim Kay, Director with KPMG Private Enterprise who works with scaling businesses said: “This is our sixth year of running this competition, and the quality of entrants was very impressive, representing a cross section of the UK’s tech scaleup ecosystem. Each of our finalists has ambitious growth plans and is doing fantastic things so we were very excited that they were part of the competition. We are very much looking forward to taking the six selected businesses out to WebSummit later in the year to showcase British scaleups and the innovation that continues to emerge from the UK.”
The other finalists who pitched at City Hall were : Cyan Forensics, DIOSYNVAX Ltd, For Good Causes, Hark, Konsentus, Mind Of My Own Ltd, Membr, The Tribe Project (by Bronze Labs), Wotch.io and Yellow Line Parking Ltd (Appyway)
Image (L-R) : Tim Kay – KPMG, Aleksandra Pedraszewska, Co-founder and COO of VividQ and graduate of Judge Business School, Bina Mehta – KPMG