We recently hosted a Demo Day for the Barclays Eagle Labs Funding Readiness Programme at our IDEALondon base. With more than 300 companies enrolled in the latest autumn 2022 cohort alone, it was tough to whittle down to a handful to showcase. If you’re interested in joining the next cohort, you can register your interest here!

First up was Twipes, a biotech ecomaterials company working to create the world’s first truly flushable and biodegradable wet wipe. With sewer-clogging fatbergs becoming common all around the world and rising concerns about microplastics, founders Ellenor McIntosh and Alborz Bozorgi think biodegradability is the way to go. They recently returned from the US where they successfully raised investment – well done!

Dr Mick O’Connor, founder of Haelo, took to the stage to explain his company’s vision: a product designed to help financial services companies prevent security breaches before they take place. By creating a digital twin of an organisation, they are able to reduce the latency between threat detection and response, reducing the cost of compliance. 

Next up was Karen Rudich, founder and CEO of Elementaryb. Their flagship product, Sherloc, aims to the world’s first AI-driven financial services marketplace designed for SMEs. According to Rudich, most SMEs do not regularly create detailed financial forecasts, which leaves them at a disadvantage when costs change unexpectedly – for example, the huge increase in shipping costs since 2020. Sherloc delivers a suite of tools, resources, and expertise for SMEs to better mitigate their financial risks. 

BabyReady aims to help parents prepare for one of the biggest investments of their lives: children. Building off junior ISAs, a route to start saving for a child long before they reach adulthood, CEO Ana Gallacher positioned their app as a fully automated financial planning and savings platform. It’s designed to empower parents to manage their family finances with confidence while also keeping longer range savings goals in mind. 

Jo Barrow, CEO at Jitai, explained why it’s so difficult to treat harmful behaviours, such as alcohol addiction: meaningful intervention should come before a relapse, but most healthcare providers only intervene after one has occurred. Jitai helps hospitals, employers, and insurers end the cycle through a combination of predictive technology, education, and smart behavioural insights. The company is currently working with Oxford University Hospitals and recently won a £100,000 grant from Innovate UK. 

Dtechtive makes data hidden in the deep web more discoverable, improving on the performance of dominant search engines which typically focus on other types of content. Dr Gautham Krishnadas, CEO and co-founder, explained that the company aims to become a leader in the fast-growing data discovery market, a segment with particular relevance for national and local governments. The company emerged from a Scottish govtech programme and recently won £240,000 in support funding. 

Omnifia uses AI to unlock real time and instant workplace engagement insights, allowing companies and HR managers to transform workplace performance. Co-founders Ivor Colson and Chris Stevens explained that existing methods of measuring employee engagement are clunkily manual. With a significant number of workers disengaged from their jobs, there are major benefits to be unlocked by a product that allows employers to monitor workforce engagement more accurately. 

Etienne Louvet, CEO at Iona, is building a drone delivery service with the goal of connecting rural areas to the logistics network. They aim to allow point-to-point and home deliveries, building on the company’s Sonnet drone and a system of smart hubs. The company’s target market is last-mile deliveries in rural areas of the UK and Europe. 

Conatix is pushing the technical frontiers of cybersecurity by applying multiple AI approaches to a more granular, detailed, and massively fast-moving stream of data. CEO David Lehrer explained their novel approach to monitoring and detecting suspicious activity on a company’s network, decompiling software to the atomic level of bits and bytes to find and block even the stealthiest malware. The company is currently in prototype testing with a number of clients, including major banks and corporates. 

Mobeen Kosar, CEO at Consone AI, and Bruce Swan, COO, took the mic to pitch their company’s solution to reducing requirements for animal testing in the drug discovery process. They have developed an AI-driven platform for predicting toxicology effects in multiple animal species, choosing the animal models that best represent human toxicity or allowing unwanted toxicity to be designed out at the onset. This should result in less wasted time and funding poured into unviable molecules and better success rates.

RenewRisk is building the world’s first end to end modelling software for the development of Offshore Wind Farms, explained CEO Ashima Gupta, aiming to address the unpredictability of the planning process, cost variations, and difficulty in quantifying risk. The startup recently signed a contract with an important insurance broker, who will be opening their client network to the company’s tech, with other client demos ongoing. 

And that’s a wrap for the Autumn 2022 cohort of the Barclays Eagle Labs Funding Readiness Programme. If your company needs help with raising funding, we strongly encourage you to apply for the next cohort starting in just a few weeks time.

You’ll find more information about the programme and register your interest here.

Image courtesy of Barclays Eagle Labs.