World’s top graduate international start-ups hit UK shores

The 27 graduate entrepreneurs who make up the ten start up teams hail from 15 different countries worldwide, including Brazil, India, China, the USA, Ukraine, Romania, Denmark, Sweden and Argentina. The Sirius Programme offers graduate teams with entrepreneurial ambition a complete package to get their business off the ground in the UK, helping create jobs and boost Britain’s enterprise community.

More than 1,500 graduate entrepreneurs from over 93 countries entered the first year of UK Trade & Investment’s Sirius Programme. Of these applicants, over 30 teams will relocate to the UK by June 2014.

The 12-month programme sees the successful teams based around the UK in one of the Sirius Programme Accelerators: Accelerator Academy, Entrepreneurial Spark, The Bakery, Oxygen Accelerator and Ignite 100.

Business ideas and inventions successful in this latest round of applications include: a wearable Oyster card-style wallet that can be used to pay for anything; an online tool for booking meeting rooms, work spaces and event venues; and a photography marketplace that enables image buyers to set any brief and have bespoke images delivered by photographers from anywhere in the world.

Alexis Garavel, a graduate of the French Aerospace Engineering School and a co-founder of SunEos – one of the winning teams – said: ““It’s very exciting for SunEos to be part of the Sirius Programme, especially as we get to own the business 100 per cent – one of the key benefits of the Programme is that we don’t need to give up any equity.

“We can’t wait to start tapping into the extensive networks the Sirius Programme offers and to start growing our business with confidence knowing we have the support of our Accelerator and UKTI. Young people are our early adopters so, with the most concentrated student scene in Europe, the UK is by far the best place to establish our business.”

The Sirius Programme start ups

The start ups joining the second round of the Sirius Programme include:

• Adverdose: Italian entrepreneurs, Paolo La Paglia and Mario Dughi are aiming to reinvent digital advertising with their video contest platform that rewards users each time they interact with advertising content;
• Edukit: The global team behind Edukit hails from Jamaica, the USA, China and St Kitts and Nevis. They’ve created an online platform that matches disadvantaged students with programmes run by charities and social enterprises that offer specialist educational and personal development;
• Fresh4Cast: Romanian Mihai Florin Ciobanu and Brazilian Francisco Teixeira de Goeya want to revolutionise the international trade of fruit and vegetables with fresh4cast, a service that will provide aggregate data on shipment, stock and sales allowing importers and exporters on different continents to make more informed decisions about what to buy, where to sell, and at what price;
• iGBL: This team from India, Ukraine and Australia aim to revolutionise university teaching by enabling all lecturers to take a ‘science experiment’ approach to teaching. By integrating experiments, polls and instant feedback into teaching, students learn by doing, increasing performance;
• PhotoPitch: The new Flickr, PhotoPitch is the brainchild of Danish trio Linisha Palm, Jens Axel So and Mikkel Lonnov. It sets out to eradicate staid stock images by enabling image buyers to commission bespoke budget images from photographers anywhere in the world;
• RingCaptcha: This innovative tech start up from Argentinean entrepreneurs Mariano Fernandez, Nicolas Messina and Martin Cocaro will revolutionise the phone verification process for websites and apps;
• Sliide: South African entrepreneur, Corbyn Munnik and the UK’s Frankie Kearney have created Sliide, a unique smartphone application that allows the end user to get paid for doing something they do everyday – unlocking their smartphone – whilst giving brands the opportunity to distribute content to incredibly targeted audiences;
• SunEos: French duo, Henry de Bennetot and Alexis Garavel’s business will revolutionise the way we socialise. Eliminating the need for wallets and queuing, SunEos is a fully integrated cashless payment system combined with e-wallet wristbands for any social event;
• Teech.io: Italian trio Lorenzo Bruno, Giuseppe Labanca and Paola Santoro’s business means developers can build, launch and maintain educational apps at a reduced cost and accelerated timeframe to take advantage of this growing market; and
• Zipcube: an online marketplace for meeting rooms, work spaces and event venues from French-born entrepreneurs Guillame Santacruz and Yacine Rezgui and Hekla Goodman from Sweden.

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By Shané Schutte

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