INSIGHTS / News

Left to right: Jon Cheng, Inovo Robotics, Henry Wood, Inovo Robotics, Caroline Fleming, Centre Director SETsquared Surrey

Innovative tech businesses from across Southern England, including 2iC Limited, Atom Universe, BotsAndUs, HOLM, Inovo Robotics Ltd,  Stay Planner, Streeva, transparently from SETsquared Surrey, came together in London yesterday to pitch for £20m of investment to an audience of 150 investors at SETsquared’s annual Accelerating Growth Investment Showcase.

Caroline Fleming, Centre Director at SETsquared in Surrey said:

“I am hugely proud of the success that businesses involved with SETsquared achieve on their pathway to growth. This year we have seen some extraordinary companies come forward with fantastic investment propositions.

“The investor community that we work with has turned out in significant numbers. This is a testament to the faith that they have in quality of the deal flow presented at SETsquared events. In 2016 businesses we supported raised £166.7m and I am confident after today, 2017 will also be a bumper year for the companies we have been working with.”

20 of the UK’s most exciting start-ups and scale-ups were at the showcase vying for investments of between £200k and £3m from an audience of more than 150 investors and corporates on 5^th December 2017. The businesses pitching at the event have developed technology in the sectors of advanced engineering, VR, retail, healthcare, robotics and cyber security.

Oana Jinga, Co-founder and CMO at BotsAndUs, who develop state-of-the-art social robots for use within the hospitality, retail and events industry, said:

“From working with us on our pitch and business plan, to helping us realise our idea of making robots everyone’s reality, we’re really appreciative of the amazing support from SETsquared.’

Investor Jerry Horwood said:

“The showcase was an excellent opportunity to identify new interested Investors to add to our Surrey 100 syndicate, putting us in a strong position of completing the round for a number of exciting high tech ventures.”

Over the last 15 years SETsquared has helped more than 1,500 businesses raise over £1.25bn in investment, as well as contributing over £3.8bn in GVA (Gross Value Added) to the UK economy with £8.6bn GVA estimated over the next decade – figures that contributed to it being named by UBI Global as the top university business incubator in the world.