Tech4Good UK DIT Trade Mission to the USA

A global app development agency with a mission to build tech for good, 3 Sided Cube works with organisations such as the American Red Cross, LUSH, Global Forest Watch, Accenture, Nordstrom, JustGiving, and World Resources Institute.
The business develops technology solutions to address worldwide problems such as natural disasters, deforestation, the shortage of blood donation, and plastic pollution. Recent successes include developing disaster preparedness and emergency alerting apps to help people during natural disasters and using satellite technology to monitor and prevent clearing of the world’s forests. Since its launch in 2009, 3 Sided Cube has put social impact at the heart of everything it does reaching communities in over 87 countries, with more than 100 million global downloads.

The business is on a mission to build a clearer understanding of biodiversity, from deeps seas to Alpine tundra, via its environmental DNA analysis services. Applied Genomics’ specialist analysis is used by its clients for biodiversity monitoring, environmental impact assessment, biosecurity, surveillance, threatened species detection and more. Its solutions are designed to suit local to landscape-scale assessments in every environment and produce highly accurate results. Natural England uses Applied Genomics’ environmental DNA kits in its research into the protection of endangered native British species such as great crested newts, freshwater pearl mussels and white clawed crayfish, as well as helping protect against invasive non-native species and diseases.

ARC Marine was founded by divers who wanted to repair fragile and damaged marine ecosystems on an unprecedented scale. The business was looking to accelerate reef creation globally and realised that existing artificial reef materials were not optimized or sustainable. ARC Marine’s Reef Cubes product are an award-winning, patented innovation, whose resilient and deceptively simple interlocking design makes them perfect for creating and restoring complex marine habitats whilst serving a dual purpose of protecting subsea assets such as monopiles, cables, foundations and pipelines. They are making a difference in offshore renewable energy; aquaculture and sustainable fisheries; habitat regeneration; eco-tourism; and eco-engineering. Since 2015 ARC Marine has grown to become an award-winning reef creation company, raising $700,000 in seed investment and becoming part of the prestigious Katapult Ocean VC accelerator in Oslo, Norway.

The business delivers software and services for data analytics, scientific computation and application development to the wind energy industry, empowering its clients to extract value from the vast amounts of data generated by wind turbines. Bitbloom provides off-the-shelf software applications, bespoke application development and training from industry experts, covering critical aspects of owning and operating wind farms profitably. It also delivers its solutions as a service to wind farm owners and operators.

Founder and managing director of Bristol Braille, Ed Rogers, is on a mission to break down barriers for blind people and revolutionize literacy, education and employment for the blind community. His Canute 360 product is the world’s only full-page electronic Braille display – the equivalent of a Kindle for blind readers. The unique technology opens up affordable access for blind people to novels, textbooks, websites, spreadsheets, tables, sheet music, graphs and mathematics. While existing electronic Braille displays can show one line of text, Bristol Braille’s product has nine lines, each of 40 characters. For the first time this means a maths problem, a bank statement or even sports league tables can be shown electronically in Braille with correct formatting, for a price comparable to a high-end smartphone or mid-range laptop. The business is looking for a few orders of around $50k to $100k to help them break out of being a small company with a great product, to being one of the world\’s biggest Braille display exporters.

Climateq is a family business on a mission to drive down global energy consumption and maximize carbon savings. It produces British-designed and manufactured air conditioning, lighting and heating control technologies that are used by global brands including Siemens, Nestle, Asda, the NHS and British Gas, and across a range of sectors such as hotels, healthcare and education. In the decade since the business was established, Climateq’s control technologies have reduced carbon output by over 20,000 tonnes across 30 countries by cutting waste in heating, lighting and air conditioning.

An award-winning digital agency, since 2010 Createful has specialized in the user experience, visual design and build of engaging, highly usable and technically advanced websites and mobile apps for all types of clients, from local businesses to international non-profits. Createful’s clients include the World Wildlife Fund, for which the agency designed and built a data visualization platform to present global sustainability assessments of banks, as well as a system to assess and monitor forest governance worldwide. The agency has also partnered with global sustainability organizations ISEAL and the Textile Exchange, among many others. Createful has already built partnerships with US-based clients and hopes to increase its presence in the US marketplace.

Start-up innovation company Cyclopic has developed a ground-breaking electric drive system that operates the centreless wheel. The business has also created a unique, compact, folding electric bike. Few companies have so far developed convincing alternative electric vehicle technologies to conventional drivetrain technology, however Cyclopic has secured UK and international patents for the Centreless Wheel Drive System, as well as UK Government funding to develop the electric drive-system and an urban electric vehicle. The drive system enables electric height adjustment, parallel parking, a safety ditch system and, with no engine space required, a space-saving interior. The business has also patented its ground-breaking micro-mobility solution, the Cyclopic E-Bike. Cyclopic is keen to develop partnerships in the US with organizations that have developed patented technologies in the automotive and micro-mobility sectors, as well as investors, and research partners.

Founded in 2018, insect science start-up Entec Nutrition is pioneering the development and adoption of farming insects as a nutritious and sustainable protein source for poultry, pet and fish feed. Insect farming will deliver sustainable, nutritious feed while substantially reducing carbon emissions and costs. The system involves breeding yellow mealworms and feeding them on the nutrient-dense spent grains that are a by product of the brewing industry. Entec Nutrition is currently testing its feed product with industry partners and aims to both reduce industry reliance on international imports and help the feed industry move towards a net zero emissions future.

Hug is a web-based platform that helps businesses to support their teams. It offers holistic real-time analysis of employee wellbeing and smart matches products, services and benefits to employee needs. With employee feedback via four core modules: Mind, Money, Health and Engagement, Hug offers real-time insights as well as providing businesses with actionable information, and advice that can be measured, providing a clear view of the impact of interventions over the longer term. Each employee module provides a complimentary personalized support program. Each program is confidential and based on clinically proven measuring tools that adapt to individual needs. Hug can also offer insights into the diversity of a workforce to give an employer the comprehensive understanding they need to engage with all of their workforce. Hug aims to gain critical market intelligence, networking opportunities with like-minded US partners and quality prospects. The business is focusing on California, where there a strong synergy and need for the product.

HCI is a partnership with Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust. It uses digital resources, including video, to transform pathways of care across the UK. HCI also provides the National Health and Care Video Library for NHSX, the organization tasked with driving forward the digitization of healthcare in the UK. CONNECTPlus is an easy-to-use app that enables healthcare providers to support patients with multiple long-term conditions in a single place and avoid unnecessary appointments. HCI is new to exporting but believes the potential of the CONNECTPlus app to support the growing number of people, in the US and globally, with multiple long-term conditions is huge.

LOQBOX’s mission is to end financial exclusion globally. This means giving everyone the chance to achieve their goals, most of which cost money. For many people, those goals are unachievable because they have not had an opportunity to build a positive financial profile, they don’t have sufficient savings or they don’t understand how to make the financial system work for them. LOQBOX is a multi-award-winning business that has already enabled hundreds of thousands of people to build their credit score with the three main credit reference agencies, and master their money while they save. It works best for people early in their financial life or for anyone trying to improve their relationship with money. When they have finished their journey, LOQBOX customers have a better credit score, a nest egg of savings and the ability to achieve their goals.

Made Open helps organizations and partnerships around the world build bespoke community platforms and design better services. Its feature-rich platform is built on a social networking framework that connects people to their community. Clients can connect people to each other and to relevant groups and organizations, and also connect people to a myriad of information, ideas, skills, support and opportunities in their own community or professional network. Each unique platform is configured to meet the individual needs of a community or network, and adapt as their needs evolve over time. Made Open is keen to assess whether there is a viable market for its platform in the US. With competitor platforms such as Nextdoor, TimebanksUSA, Hourworld and Hivebrite having their own strengths and weaknesses, the team believes there is a gap in the US market for its community platform.

Ocean 3D has grown rapidly to become one of the most widely recognized leaders in creating accessibility-friendly interactive VR tours for a range of sectors including cultural, education, aerospace and healthcare. As a result of the Covid vaccination program many organizations are now beginning to help colleagues transition back to work. Many employees may have natural anxieties or hidden mental health conditions, and for businesses that are looking to generate new and highly engaged customers, low-cost, interactive, remotely accessible information is also essential.

The Pansensic text analytics platform turns organizations’ consumer, employee and society feedback into data-driven insights for improvement and growth, using a combination of AI technologies and a vast database of key words and phrases. The platform decodes the many complexities of unstructured human language so that, for the first time, it can be analyzed by the full power of AI down to the granular level. The business’s global clients, such as the UK National Health Service, Samsung, GSK, Pernod Ricard and Cadbury, use these deep insights to improve their organizations, products and services. Pansensic CEO and founder Paul Howarth is a world leader in extracting value from unstructured narrative datasets. In 2015, he founded the business and led development of the Hybrid Text Analytics platform that leverages artificial intelligence technologies by teaching the machine with human-curated ontologies, keyword sets and conditionalities.

Scanning Pens’ award-winning technology has become a life saver for people with dyslexia and other reading difficulties. The firm’s assistive technology tools, the ReaderPen and the ExamReader are pocket-sized, portable pen scanners designed to aid students with their reading, comprehension and learning, enabling them to study and work independently. The Scanning Pens products scan text and read it aloud or via headphones to help weak readers. Founders Toby Sutton and Jack Churchill are on a mission to raise global awareness of dyslexia, and other learning disabilities. Their movement, #SucceedwithDyslexia aims to do just that – by promoting positivity about dyslexia around the world.

Education technology business ScienceScope aims to help young people develop digital skills for a sustainable future by using internet of things (IoT) technology in the classroom. The company provides IoT tools, devices and resources for schools and colleges and data can be collected, visualized, analyzed and shared with students all over the world. The business has an aim of preparing young people for a ‘big data’ and AI-driven job market, as well as connecting teachers and students globally and empowering students to be involved in environmental decision making in schools.

Established in 2016 by Jaya Chakrabarti MBE, TISCreport.org is the world’s largest Transparency In Supply Chains platform. The firm’s global vision is to eradicate modern slavery, human trafficking and labor exploitation from supply chains, by creating a critical mass of transparency data to influence corporate behaviour in their efforts to create a fairer, safer world. The business provides some key human rights-related data sets completely free, and sustains itself through selling commercially valuable non-financial data sets and AI technology services. As a B Corp committed to building circular economies, TISCreport donates 50% of corporate membership fees to the anti-slavery charity Unseen and the Modern Slavery Helpline. TISCreport has worked in partnership with the Welsh Government and aims to raise awareness of its platform with public procurement departments in the US. The USA has legislation ready to plug and play via the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act and TISCreport is already working with an NGO partner to evolve legislation.

An experienced, purpose-driven innovator in the global online learning market, Upskill People helps millions of people to upskill every year. Its course content, tailored to individual sectors or brands, is the ‘best in class’ and delivers measurable outcomes. Upskill People is not constrained by conventional academic theories and so delivers practical and relevant solutions. People are the most important growth driver for any organization and the firm’s courses promote a positive culture, reduce risk and deliver extraordinary results. Upskill People’s library of over 100 courses includes Managing People and Safety, Health and Wellbeing. CEO Pete Fullard believes the firm’s revolutionary approach to developing great people managers is perfectly suited to the US market.

Value Xd is a cutting-edge and unique cloud-based analytics platform with ground-breaking analytical technology, modules and applications. Unlike any other software, Value Xd reinterprets and covers the entire analytical value chain within its own technology, from data creation and import to modeling and analysis, from modeling to projections, from presentations to live simulations, from teamwork to sharing and publishing. All private and public institutions are facing the need to reinvent their internal and external communications and the architecture through which they build and deploy their intelligence. Value Xd is an ideal analytics platform for the new digital age. It enhances efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency in the analytical process and value chain of organizations and institutions. Current partners include King’s College Cambridge University; Bloomberg and Finoptek, and the firm is looking for strategic partners in the US.

Versarien is an advanced manufacturing business which is a globally leading company for graphene R&D and production. The business specializes in graphene powders and inks having purchased spin-out companies from the Universities of Manchester and Cambridge. Versarien works with companies from all sectors to harness the benefits of graphene in their products. For example, adding the smallest amounts of graphene can ensure extreme mechanical strength, electro and thermal conductivity is maximized. Certified by the Graphene Council as the world’s only Verified Graphene Producer, Versarien has on-going projects with some of the world\’s largest Fortune 500 private sector companies, including Airbus, as well as working with the UK Government. The business hopes to expand into the US by finding investors, partners and projects that align to its strategy and application maturity levels.