Back to the Future with the RGU Startup Accelerator 2024
The Robert Gordon University Startup Accelerator, our flagship start-up development programme, is going Back to the Future for year 6! As a nod to our inaugural 2019 cohort, this year’s competition was inclusively open to RGU staff, students, alumni within 10 years of graduation and North East Scotland College.
All applicants needed to enter was an innovative early-stage start-up idea, including third sector, sustainability and impact-based projects. The 2024 Accelerator is now in full swing, with members of this year’s cohort travelling to in person sessions in Aberdeen all the way from Ethiopia, London, Coventry, and Edinburgh!
Why the travel? Along with benefitting from seasoned support from RGU’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Group (EIG) our cohort is further strengthened by our active collaborations within the dedicated North-east entrepreneurial support ecosystem. Adding to participant benefits of £1,000 equity free start-up seed funding, mentorship, free co-working space at the city-centre based ONETech Hub and a new benefit this year transformational coaching for personal development, we also plug our Accelerator start-ups into industry support from ecosystem partners like Barclays Eagle Labs, Murgitroyd, Converge, Interface, DataLabs, Techscaler and more, all in line with the Entrepreneurial Campus report, fortifying collaborative links between academia, commercialisation and industry.
Looking to the future, this year the annual Startup Showcase event is holding on our home turf of RGU, Garthdee Campus on Thursday 16 May, 2024. The highly anticipated event will showcase Accelerator finalists pitches, the cohort’s mini expo stands and also promises to have some exciting surprises in store for guests this year. Start-ups in the programme range from a digital twin heart to AI driven ground modelling solutions for offshore windfarms. See more information on this year’s start-ups below:
Big Dog Stories
Founder: Colin Fraser
Meet Colin, the doodler and storyteller behind Big Dog Stories - a a series of children's picture books centred around a leggy rescue lurcher and his adventures. But this isn’t just a series of story books, it’s a creative escape. Writing a children’s book had been a tick box on Colin’s bucket list for many years but being an illustrator was something that was left far back in his childhood. When illustrating his first story - ‘Big Dog and the Home for Lost Hounds’ - he found as an adult, his favoured past time brought him a space to switch-off from the ‘real world’ and destress. Seeing the value drawing brought, he decided to use his stories as the vehicle to encourage others to pick up the pencil and switch-off through sketch. Each book instalment comes with a downloadable activity pack with colouring-in pages, drawing tasks and doodling prompts to get children, their parents and relatives to connect with their creativity. With the first book edging towards print, this is just one of a very long tail of tales.
Cardio Intel
Founders: Adedeji Aremu, Olugbenga Abejirin, Banke Abejirin
Cardiovascular Diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide - Accounting for 17.9 million lives each year, (85% die from Heart Attacks & strokes alone) around 31% of all global deaths. Cardio Intel addresses this with the Digital Heart - a digital twin of your heart on a mobile app! The Digital Heart is a virtual and personalized representation of the user's heart for the practical purposes of monitoring, prevention, and diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases.
CarnieBees
Founders: Rebeka Szaboova, Kaya Malinowska
Carniebees is a dynamic startup that focuses on bringing the goodness of nature to customers. Specialising in producing and selling a unique range of honey infusions and offering a delightful blend of flavours that cater to health-conscious individuals seeking natural alternatives. The products stand out in the market due to their quality, innovation, and commitment to sustainability.
EmpowHER
Founder: Sabina Porter
A wellness app with a social media aspect, made for 18-24 year-old female survivors of sexual violence. The apps design is playful and bright whilst still conveying a serious message. Many survivors suffer in silence, EmpowHER serves to help them understand they are not alone and offers many ways to help whilst building a community. EmpowHER is the first of its kind, tackling this common faced trauma from a new perspective that is less daunting; making help more accessible to the target. EmpowHER’s ambition is to help survivors nationwide and unify their voices to create change.
GB Rights Consult
Founder: Georgiana F Bugeag
GB Rights Consult addresses the gaps in UK support services by offering personalised representation to individuals facing challenges in employment rights, welfare rights, housing support, and complaints against public services. The mission centres around empowering people to know their rights and stand up for themselves. GB Rights Consult distinguishes itself in the market through its innovation combination of personalised representation services and a centralised app-drive community platform.
InnoSport AI
Founders: Jan Stander & Luis Toral
InnoSport AI offers an AI-driven sports coaching platform that transforms the training experience for athletes and coaches. Catering to a wide range of customers, from amateur enthusiasts to professional sports teams. The platform provides personalized, high-quality training guidance using advanced technology. The ambition is to democratize elite sports coaching, making top-tier training accessible to all, and to become a leading name in sports technology.
It's Roni
Founder: Roni (Weronika) Dziubek
Aiming to help crochet beginners who are just starting out learn and give clear visual instructions which will be in short sections so as not to overwhelm the beginner. This is the main problem which people face when wanting to learn how to crochet. Providing clear tutorials for customers to learn how to crochet, these tutorials will be broken up into smaller videos and this also means it’ll be easier to find the place they where at within the video complementing this by creating affordable crochet starter kits.
NÃ darrach
Founders: Jacob Stobie & Cyril Sam
NÃ darrach carefully sources tallow-based skincare offerings from local, regenerative farms that use rotational grazing methods to raise healthy livestock, rebuild soil and ensure utmost care with regards to animal welfare. Modern skincare products increasingly rely on harmful ingredients - Nadarrach seeks to provide a real solution to this issue. NÃ darrach caters to those that are health and sustainability conscious, those afflicted by chronic skin conditions to the many who are disadvantaged by a lack of understanding regarding science-based skincare - aiming to educate and engender ESG values through social media channels. The ambition is to diversify the product range, innovate sustainability practices and establish the brand as a leader in natural, sustainable skincare.
On-A-Roll
Founder: Nyameye Otoo
The app would be key in photograph and progress management, this application is of value to both the amateur and also the serious professional. The former because it lowers the barrier of entry into Film Photography and the enthusiast because it allows reliable progress tracking, and the ability to improve getting it "right first time."
Placement Hub
Founders: Rory Quinn-Bailie & Jeremy Arnold
Placement Hub is a platform for health care students to share their experiences at specific placement sites, allowing incoming students to set informed expectations, and to communicate directly with students previously in their position. The vision is to provide a space that empowers health care students across the UK to go into their placements on a more informed, prepared, and confident level.
Revive Geoscience Services
Founders: Wenfang Fan and Shaji Mathew
The business idea is to develop a software platform that leverages AI technology to generate an integrated ground model for use in offshore windfarm development. This AI-based software is anticipated to enhance operational efficiency and significantly reduce the time required to produce the ground model. The proposed AI-powered software solution is poised to revolutionize the industry by delivering faster and more efficient results in a considerably shorter timeframe. This innovation aims to provide developers with critical information for offshore wind farm installations.
The software is expected to benefit a wide range of industries, including offshore wind farms, CCS, hydrogen, or tidal industries that require offshore installations. The output from the software will encompass interpreted seabed hazards, sub-surface horizons, a geological ground model incorporating geological log data, and a comprehensive report of the results, including an uncertainty assessment.
STEMSpec
Founders: Emmanuel Eke & Ojotule Onoja
STEMSpec is an innovative app designed to solve the pervasive problem of limited STEM adoption in UK secondary schools. The main issue addressed is the lack of clarity and guidance for students exploring STEM education and career paths. The founders strongly believe the current challenge of STEM adoption in the UK can be significantly reduced if students gain more clarity on how their current STEM subjects align with different career paths in STEM. That clarity is what STEMSpec is providing.
Team Up North
Founders: Shauna Narine & Josh Mennie
Team Up North is the future of impactful corporate engagement in North East Scotland. The mission is to foster a cohesive community where businesses actively collaborate with the third sector, driving positive change across the region. Through streamlined processes, specialised skill utilisation, and bespoke Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives, they hope to bridge the skills gap between corporations and charities, empowering professionals to make a meaningful impact. With a comprehensive approach encompassing service matching, skill-based volunteering, and donations, they aim to drive meaningful change while promoting sustainability and social responsibility. Team Up to create a brighter future for North East Scotland.
Weavecentrix
Founder: Mike Gill
The UK rail freight industry relies on a 1974 mainframe called TOPS to control the movement and maintenance of 24,000 freight wagons. In effect, this rich source of operational data is locked away in the 1970s. Fleet controllers, looking after 800 wagons, start their day fishing in TOPS for problems that impact wagon availability, the key contractual measure across the industry. There are 50 companies with fleet controllers who directly manage rail freight wagons. The Weavecentrix solution frees up the operational rail freight data currently locked away in TOPS and enriches it in innovative ways that give actionable insights to rail freight operators, maintainers, and engineers. Tailoring will be offered to companies who are seeking competitive advantage, driving more insights from the data through the use of machine learning, targeted at maintenance and availability.
Yahya's International Hub
Founders: Shiva Afraste & Albena Kostadinova
Grampian region hosts many young asylum seekers who are unaccompanied. These young boys and girls age 16-22 years have fled from their countries of origin to seek refuge. They are often unaccompanied by an adult, isolated, alone, confused and scared. Needing someone to befriend them, to help understand the culture , community integration and protect them from depression, suicide and crime. The business model is matching a local young adult to befriend a young asylum seeker. The ambition is to help the young asylum seeker develop skills required for getting independent and ready for their life in UK through optimised befriending so they can contribute to the local economy.
