The Enterprise team at Heriot-Watt University’s £19 million Global Research, Innovation and Discovery (GRID) is celebrating a successful first six months by highlighting its early success stories.
GRID, home to the university’s Business & Enterprise Hub incubator, has been working with tech start-ups including SolarisKit, Celestia, Suji BFR, Farm-Hand and Alana throughout the first quarter of 2020.
David Richardson, chief entrepreneurial executive at Heriot-Watt, said: “Our objective is to drive real impact by establishing new companies as well as helping existing organisations collaborate and innovate with our talent pool of students, researchers and early-stage entrepreneurs. We have many enablers for this within Heriot-Watt including the Edinburgh Business School Incubator, GRID and our Innovation Park.”
- SolarisKit is a spin-out ‘cleantech’ company from Heriot-Watt that recently raised £250,000 to develop low-cost solar heat technology for deployment in developing countries.
- Celestia UK is part of Netherlands-based Celestia Technologies Group that specialises in satellite and aerospace-related technology. It moved to GRID for an initial 3-month period to establish a Scottish base and is set to transfer to Heriot-Watt’s Innovation Park later this year.
- Farm-Hand is an ‘agritech’ startup founded in India that is moving its operational base to GRID at Heriot-Watt as it continues to develop Internet of Things-enabled technology to provide data analytics around irrigation for small to medium sized farmers.
- Alana – the the conversation AI software specialist that recently announced its formation as a spin-out company from GRID at Heriot-Watt. It expects to benefit from an increase in sales of touch-free devices in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
- Suji BFR develops wearable tech to help athletes manage training volume and avoid overtraining injuries and maintain muscular performance during periods of de-loading.
Paul Devlin, head of commercialisation at Heriot-Watt, said: “The purpose of the Enterprise team at GRID is to support companies through to, or at, the commercialisation stage and we are working with a really exciting crop of companies who are developing innovative solutions to real world problems.”
