Meet the startups joining BGV’s Autumn 24 Programme

We’re thrilled to announce the twelve ventures joining us for BGV’s Autumn 2024 programme. After a rigorous selection process reviewing over 300 applications, we’ve selected these fantastic companies driving positive outcomes for people and planet. Spanning AI, carbon removal, digital health and transformation, biotech, and many other industries, these ventures will receive £60,000 investment and participate in our flagship Tech for Good programme over the next six weeks. We can’t wait to see how these talented founders will shape the future of tech and society. 

For now, meet our teams!

Ventures contributing to a Sustainable Planet

CIRCULO
Founders: Vanessa Jacobs, Emily Rea, Vipaasha Sheel, Karm Khanna

Circulo addresses excessive consumer waste due to poor repair infrastructure. While a large proportion of waste sent to landfills annually is repairable, repair businesses in the USA, UK, and EU lack the capacity and software to offer seamless repairs to their customers. Circulo is an end-to-end, plug-and-play SaaS solution that automates and digitises repair logistics. 
‍

NEO-FOSSIL
Founders: Dr. Joshua Rees-Garbutt, Dr. Bethany Eldridge, Kieren Sharma
‍
To keep climate change below 1.5°C, we need to remove 7-9 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2050. Removing carbon dioxide (CDR) plays a critical role in meeting this Paris Agreement target, with existing tech showing critical limitations, such as issues in carbon removal verification, cost and scalability, and site suitability for physical carbon storage. Neo-fossil is developing a technology using machine learning that removes CO2 directly from the atmosphere by making a sustainable E.coli-based biopolymer. Their carbon-storing biopolymer will be used as a sustainable industrial material (for example, for insulation, electrodes, space exploration materials), minimising the extraction of resources and waste. 
‍

WILD MOSAIC
Founder: Jon Conradi

Wild Mosaic aims to reverse biodiversity loss. Alarmingly, the protection of key biodiversity areas has stalled. In the UK alone, nearly 1 in 6 species (16%) are now threatened with extinction. Wild Mosaic provides a subscription for people to restore nature and connect them directly to the process of rewilding. It creates personal connections through GIS, audio, video and other technology that can bring this to life, remotely. Rewilding or ‘ecosystem restoration’ recreates habitat for wildlife to return to land and natural processes to recover. 

‍

Ventures contributing to an Inclusive Society

AUBIN
Founders: Corinna Smiles, Mike Lloyd
‍
Aubin aims to reduce the barriers to public transport faced by neurodivergent and anxious passengers. With an estimated 15-20% of the UK’s population identifying as neurodivergent, it poses significant challenges to social mobility and quality of life. 52% of autistic people say they avoid public transport due to fear of unexpected changes, making them less socially and economically active. Aubin is a multi-modal passenger assistant app supporting neurodiverse passengers on public transport, tailoring journeys to their individual needs.

BLUTE
Founders: Aira Gucilatar
‍
The NHS is facing an unprecedented workforce crisis that threatens the quality of patient care. With 111,000 unfilled positions today, £10billion is wasted on temporary staffing to plug the gaps. This crisis is compounded by a student dropout rate of 12.5% in medical professions, due to negative clinical placement experiences impacting student wellbeing, leading to anxiety, depression and course abandonment. Blute empowers students with a user-friendly app to log placement activities, voice concerns and access vital resources. These real-time student insights are then fed into a university dashboard so that faculty can identify at-risk students and support remotely, mitigating the impact of negative placements on mental health and fostering a more resilient healthcare workforce. 
‍

TANDEM
Founders: Dr. Rob Hughes, Prof. Alastair van Heerden
‍
Children in low-income families are less likely to be ‘on track’ with their development by the time they reach school age. A positive home learning environment can help to lessen the negative effects of lower socioeconomic status on children’s development. Tandem is a generative-AI powered story creator that promotes early childhood development, alongside parents and caregivers, early years practitioners and private, public and third-sector organisations. Tandem’s tech brings together a proprietary reasoning engine, real-time passive sensing to track interactions and promote children’s socio-emotional and cognitive development through reading. 
‍

NOT IMPOSSIBLE
Founders: Emma Colwill, Luke Ashman 

Well-connected young people are twice as likely to complete multiple placements and achieve higher incomes throughout their careers. According to the management team, given that 600,000 young people leave school every year (and only 1 in 3 remember doing work experience), there is a huge opportunity to build a marketplace that removes the reliance on family connections. Not Impossible provides an online marketplace that connects young people (16-25) with employees doing work they care about. The solution consists of three core components: high-impact micro placements based on employee availability, smart work experience matching, and centralised logistics, which remove the administrative burden on employers. 
‍

OUR TIME HQ/ NEXIE
Founders: Janet Martin
‍
The global care crisis affects billions, often forcing caregivers, especially at the intersection of race and gender, into debt and jeopardising their well-being and career stability. With 1 in 3 NHS workers also providing unpaid care, the problem is urgent. Nexie is an AI-driven platform that helps frontline workers reduce stress and improve work/life balance by automating mundane tasks, offering proactive support, and providing personalised recommendations. With a chat interface in 54 languages, it engages users through personalised content. 

‍

Ventures contributing to Healthy Lives

BODYOWN
Founders: Nayol Santos, Ruby Lai

BodyOwn addresses insufficient and inequitable access to postnatal care. In the UK, postnatal care typically ends after a single GP visit at eight weeks, despite evidence showing extended care would be beneficial. Perinatal mental health issues cost the economy £8.1 billion annually, with 30.3% of live births to non-UK-born mothers¹¹, who face higher mental health risks and disparities in care. BodyOwn is a personalised postnatal recovery app offering self-assessments, health goals, specialist consultations, and educational modules. It provides affordable, inclusive care, bridging the gap in public and private services.
‍

‍TREWLINK AI
Founders: Dr. Jozef Kamp, Sam Jarrett 

Trewlink AI is addressing the acute workforce crisis in the NHS. With 111,000 unfilled positions today, there is not enough staff to match the demand of health care services leading to adverse outcomes for patients. Challenges persist for international workers, despite making up 20% of the NHS workforce¹⁵, due to lack of mobility and inefficient assessment of skills. TrewLink offers an AI-powered, educator-led solution for skills assessment and workforce development. It automates workflows, saving time and identifying staff skills and training needs. 
‍

VIWIPE
Founders: Dr. Kenny Malpartida Cardena, Yihan Dong

Globally, cervical cancer is the fourth most common cause of cancer death in women, claiming the lives of 350,000 women every year. 95% of cervical cancer cases are linked to HPV infection. The current screening tool, the speculum, has remained unchanged for 200 years, leading to ⅓ of young women under 35 avoiding screenings out of embarrassment and fear, and disproportionately affecting women from ethnic minority backgrounds. ViWipe is an HPV self-test using menstrual blood. Their non-invasive, low-cost bio-tech based product is designed to screen for HPV using patent-pending paper-based materials for simplified lab testing, aiming to increase screening rates, especially among those who avoid traditional methods. Their technology can also be expanded to other STI testing in the future. 

‍

Diversity of our Autumn 2024 cohort 

• 58% of founders identify as women, 42% as men.
• The founding teams are composed of 42% all-women teams, 25% all-men teams, and 33% of mixed-gendered teams.
• 25% of companies are based outside London. 
• 42% of founders identify as ‘White’, 21% as ‘Asian or Asian British’, 21% as ‘Black, Black British, Caribbean, or African’’, 13% as ‘Mixed or with multiple ethnic groups’, and 4% as ‘other ethnic group’. 

‍

If you’re considering joining our next programme (applications will open towards end of the year), then make sure to speak to a member of the BGV team about your tech for good venture to discuss if it’s a good fit.

‍