Million Pound Start-Up Attracts Innovative Start-ups From Around the World as Deadline Approaches

News provided by

Ketchum Ltd

22 Jul, 2013, 08:00 GMT

LONDON, July 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

  • Global disruptive technology companies descend on London to win latest competition offering £1 million investment and unique support package
  • Businesses include community rescue service, medical analytics, and new energy efficient materials

The hunt for the next high-growth company is gathering momentum, as London's Million Pound Start-up competition has brought in a huge wave of innovative technology companies from all corners of the globe in just seven weeks. Applications have been flying in from Canada, U.S, South America, Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Asia, India, Middle East, and Europe. Since its launch on May 23rd 2013, today over 303 companies have entered to win the £1 million prize, from 123 cities, in 43 countries.

Million Pound Start-up is the first global contest offering £1 million equity investment and the support from Seedrs, KPMG, Ketchum, Taylor Wessing, Digital Shoreditch, Playgen, City of London, London & Partners, City University London, School for Startups and London First. Headquartered in London the goal is to propel the winner into a £100 million company within five years.

The partners and investors, whom represent years' worth of expertise, experience and industry know-how, are looking for more than just financial return. They are pooling resources of creativity and innovation, industry expertise and contacts to accelerate the success of the winning business. The closing deadline for Million Pound Start-up entries is August 31st 2013.

Kam Star, Founder of Digital Shoreditch and leading the Million Pound Start-up competition commented, "No matter where they are in the world, the competition will help the winning company to establish their headquarters in London and give them the support they need to grow exponentially."

In London, over 15,000 start-ups were created in the EC1 postcode, according to research unveiled this week from UHY Hacker Young.

Tudor Aw, KPMG Head of Technology Europe added "This competition will help promote London's start-up reputation. That said, we still need to do more to promote Tech UK as a brand overseas so people understand all the strengths we have, as well as our existing world leading capability. Good examples of this include Graphene which is seen as a technology that will revolutionize the 21st century; it is not well known that two physicists from ManchesterUniversity won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in this field."

Graphene is a new material 200x stronger than steel, hailed as the new wonder material discovered in the UK in 2003. Graphene hails new innovations that would benefit aspects of our daily lives from faster computer chips, to improved batteries, to low-cost filtration methods for making sea water drinkable, to new flat screen TV's and monitors that could be folded into our pockets or painted on walls and buildings.

Other Million Pound Start-Up competition entries include:

  • CityHeroes, Chile. An app for people to report and help to solve collective issues and risk situations in less than 30 seconds.

CityHeroes is a web and mobile app, which provides a dashboard to companies and organizations so they can see all the issues in real time and which is fed by people's reports and other sources. Their objective is to become the link between people and safety organizations, companies, authorities, neighborhoods, NGOs and others, creating a cooperative culture and truly inspiring people to save lives.

  • Edisse, Australia. A provider of advanced medical analytics and personal healthcare devices for the elderly.

In Australia alone, there are 3 million people above the age of 65 and each year, 1 in 3 of these people experience some form of fall, with about 50% of these falls occurring outdoors. The Edisse watch is an automatic panic button built into the form factor of a watch for the elderly with three main functionalities - fall detection, location tracking and data analytics.

  • Displаir, Russia. An interactive air screen, which projects any multimedia content on air.

Displаir projects any multimedia content on air (static images, video, 3D-models) and impacts four out of the five senses; the sight with the help of a "magic" air screen; the hearing with an built-in speaker system; the touch by using an interactive working surface; the smell by using a smell module.The main "trick" of Displаir is its unparalleled interactive system, there are no similar solutions to it world-wide.

Managed by Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulated Seedrs, the final 20 companies will only be revealed after investment decision has been made to choose the winner.

The deadline for applications is August 31st 2013, so only six weeks remain to submit entries and for companies to tell the world why their company should win the £1 million investment. Entering the competition takes just a few seconds, a few seconds that could transform your future. Read more about the current entries and competition here: http://millionpoundstartup.com/

Note to editors:

Digital Shoreditch celebrates the outstanding creative, technical and entrepreneurial talent of East London and Tech City. It runs monthly meet-ups, a huge festival of the most talented digital and technical creatives, connects brands and buyers to its members, and runs a comprehensive directory, hackathons and other competitions. Digital Shoreditch 2013 had 14,537 people participate in the festival which turned Shoreditch Town Hall into an extraordinary digital playground from 20th-26th May, and ran community events in the week until Friday 31st May. http://digitalshoreditch.com 

For further media information contact Sarah Nadif, Richard Botley or David Vindel at Ketchum on Tel: +44(0)207-6113500 or email: digitalshoreditch@ketchum.com