Cibus Health (Consumer)

The World Health Organisation (WHO) found in 2018 that 75% of UK infants are exceeding their energy requirements increasing the obesity risk at a very age. Cibus is developing a monitoring system of physiological biomarkers to visualise and better understand the feed process. The solution combines engineering and computational skills which needs to combine with an easy offering for parents and caretakers similar to the Spacecot project we looked at in 2015. We met Adrian and Ti, the two founders, at the Missing Bean in Oxford on 26/02/2020.

GreenerRoutes (ClimaTech)

GreenerRoutes is a navigation app focussed on helping people to select the most eco-friendly transport option. The combination of effective navigational software, a real-time estimate of carbon emissions, the possibility of offsetting these emissions through environmental projects, and the use of behavioural change techniques looks to us still too complicated. Competitors such as Google and Facebook will have this data at hand already, the reason for which the team needs to identify market niche that would provide a direct high impact to the app user. We met with the founders Bhuvana, Cora and Max at the OX1 Demo Day 2020.

legalme (LegalTech)

The Oxford start-up aims to make the law less intimidating by building an online platform to help students manage and win disputes against their landlords or letting agency by providing free access to the relevant legal information, documents and support throughout the process.  The idea to access the mass market claim litigation has been pioneered by companies such as flightright.com or Advotronix, using a three-pronged approach of a marketing-sales frontend (collector), a legal advisory unit (expert) and a highly-automated backoffice to manage the workflow and to analyse process performance. Runner-up on demo day and winner of the £5.000 prize. We met with Arthur, Chiara and James at the OX1 Demo Day 2020.

LevelUp (EduTech)

Empowering everyone in education sounds a bit too visionary to us but the idea to employ insights from cognitive neuroscience and data-driven gamification has been successfully pioneered by knack.it and it addresses a huge market opportunity, especially in Asia. The first milestone will be translation of a math syllabus into a set of mobile games and to study the impact on learning results with a test group before becoming the first educational MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). Worth the experiment and £10.000 of prize money well earned. We met with the founders Karen, Sarah and Luka at the OX1 Demo Day 2020.

Ripple (Wellbeing)

Scalability of analogue solutions depends on the automation of backoffice processes and the quality assurance process for large numbers of staff. We like Ripple’s idea to help student to cope with stress and mental health issues by providing peer-to-peer meditation group sessions. Charging welfare budgets so students can attend for free is a smart way to pricing which has secured them paid partnerships with 11 Oxford colleges. Training and auditing additional session leaders and digitalise backoffice operations will give them a leading edge in their niche market. We met with Daniel and Ben, the two founders, at the OX1 Demo Day 2020.

ScanGenomics (HealthTech)

Genes play a large role in determining the state of our health. ScanGenomics enables healthcare practitioners to identify the genetic structure of an individual by a simple fingerprint scan thereby allowing early detection of gene defects. A double-encryption process ensures that data remains anonymous unless the patient consents to its release. While the genomic data will be highly valuable for the delivery of personalised medicine products, we are doubtful if such algorithm can be developed and the funding required to build of a distribution organisation that delivers on hardware sales and practitioner support. We met with the founders Ashwin, Shyam, Sasha and Thomas at the OX1 Demo Day 2020.

Serena (Personal Security)

Women worry of traveling home alone after a late night out as the world is still not equally safe for men and women. Serena is building a platform to match up women with a travel buddy based on their location to get them home safely. However, we estimate the probability of finding a matching partner being low and more stakeholder research (police, security firms) is needed. We see overlap with Seon, too, which could be a powerful partner. We met with the founders Karen, Sarah and Luka at the OX1 Demo Day 2020.