Edinburgh is becoming one of the UK’s fastest-growing tech hubs. Combining international talent, top educational institutions and a vibrant startup community, Edinburgh offers plenty of opportunities for startups, tech and innovation. Maddyness has selected some of the best Edinburgh-based startups to watch in 2020.
As of March 2018, there were over 343,000 SMEs registered and operating in Scotland, providing an estimated 1.2 million jobs. The ONS showed that startups from Scotland survive longer than those based in London (43.7% vs. 39.3%) and in 2017 Edinburgh was named the best place to start a small business in the UK and is home to many organisations that provide support and funding to startup founders.
Skyscanner makes travel effortless for everyone with an unrivalled mix of choice and value. From flights to hotels and car hire, the company works closely with the biggest names in travel to bring over 100 million travellers every option they need to plan and book their perfect trip. Part of the Ctrip family, they are a fast-growing global business with a local outlook, employing more than 1,000 people from over 50 different countries in offices across Europe, Asia and North America.
Tackling issues of isolation and poor communication, the Neatebox “Welcome” platform removes barriers and promotes empathetic relationships between consumers and customer service teams, they are promoting societal change and heralding a new age of understanding and communication.
Based in Edinburgh, Drinkly is a drinks-on-demand service that promises “chilled beers, spirits and wines to your door in one hour”. More than 650 carefully-curated drinks and snacks are available for delivery to customers in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London.
Founded in 2018 by Robin Knox and Paul Walton, Boundary is a smart home alarm venture aiming to disrupt the home security market. They have introduced an innovative home security system controlled via mobile devices, which “brings neighbourhood watches into the 21st century”. Features include break-in notification, mobile phone alerts to friends or family living in the area, compatibility with other smart home systems, remote monitoring and more. So far, the startup has successfully raised £2.2M.
Administrate provides a SaaS training and learning management platform, designed to help manage and automate the process of delivering education. The company has grown to employ more than 100 people and has offices in the Middle East and the US. In February 2019, Administrate secured £3.78M in funding to help develop the company’s platform that solves the challenges of defining, delivering, tracking and analysing learning within an organisation.
Created in 2015, Care Sourcer is a tech platform matching those who need care with care providers. The platform offers comparison and matching for elderly care based on price, rating, specific requirements and more. It enables users to make enquiries and receive offers from care providers who have are available immediately. To date, the startup has raised about $14.5M in funding.
Float provides online forecasting and cash management to help businesses monitor their cash flow and its users can connect the platform to their existing accounting software, whether that be Xero, FreeAgent or QuickBooks. Colin Hewitt founded Float in 2012 after running a digital agency for several years. It was here that Hewitt experienced difficulties of cash flow forecasting and found the inspiration to launch Float. In 2017, Float secured £500K in funding and has steadily expanded its team over the past three years.
Established in 2012 by Professor Harald Haas and Mostafa Afgani, pureLiFi came out of the University of Edinburgh. The firm provides high-speed, bi-directional and fully networked wireless communication that uses light, rather than radio waves to transmit data. In 2015, the firm received seed funding totalling £4M. The firm was recognised for its work in 2017 winning the digital trends ‘cool tech’ award at Mobile World Congress.
Current Health have created an AI-powered remote patient monitoring solution. The wearable tech, which is worn on the upper arm, collects vital signs in real-time and feeds this data to the cloud where it is analysed by the company’s proprietary algorithms. This process helps to monitor the wearers health and allows clinicians to intervene earlier. Four years after establishment, the startup has raised $11.7M in funding and has transferred to the Bay area.
Established in 2016, Criton is a travel tech startup that has developed an app for the hospitality sector to inform hotel guests about their own facilities as well as what is on in the local area. The app combines destination guides, guest and property management information as well as geofencing, location-based offers and promotions, and in-stay or in-app messaging.
Founded in 2017, Prodsight is enabling businesses to gain insight from customer support conversation data. The app makes this easy by automatically analysing conversations for topics and sentiment and producing a continuously updated report on the most common user issues. This allows data-driven decisions to be made quickly and efficiently, helping product teams to rapidly identify problems, education issues and prioritise fixes and improvements.
Edinburgh | Tech For Good | @neatebox
Tackling personal loneliness and communication, the Neatebox “Welcome” platform removes barriers and promotes empathetic relationships between consumers and customer service teams, promoting real societal change and heralding a new age of understanding and communication.
Based in Edinburgh, Drinkly (@wearedrinkly) is a drinks-on-demand service that promises “chilled beers, spirits and wines to your door in one hour”. More than 650 carefully-curated drinks and snacks are available for delivery to customers in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London. John Robertson, founder at Drinkly, tells us more.
Boundary is a smart home alarm venture established by entrepreneurs Robin Knox and Paul Walton in 2018, hoping to disrupt the home security market. They have introduced an innovative home security system controlled via mobile devices, which according to them, brings neighbourhood watches into the 21st century. Features include break-in notification, mobile phone alerts to friends or family living in the area, compatibility with other smart home systems, remote monitoring and more. The startup has also successfully raised £2.2 million so far.
Care sourcer provides a tech platform to match care seekers with care providers. The platform offers comparison and matching for elderly care based on price, rating, specialisms, and more. Besides that, it enables users to make enquiries and receive offers from care providers who have immediate availability. The promising startup was founded in 2015 and has raised about $14.5 million in funding till date.
Casta Spes Technologies is a developer of robotic security vehicles for autonomous patrols, threat classification and license plate recognition. Their flagship product, Ziva, is a patent-pending, dual-wheeled, multi-terrain robotic vehicle able to travel to various terrains, with a battery life of up to 14 hours, and built-in sensing capabilities, as well as two-way communication modalities. CST was founded in 2017.
Criton – Established in June 2016, Criton is a traveltech startup which has developed an app for the hospitality sector to inform hotel guests about their own facilities as well as what is on in the local area. The app combines destination guides, guest and property management information as well as additional features: geo-fencing, or location based offers and promotions, and in-stay or in-app messaging. The company secured £5 million in funding to help hotels provide an unforgettable hotel experience.
Current Health – The heart of Current Health is its AI-powered remote patient monitoring solution. The wearable, which is worn on the upper arm, collects vital signs in real-time and then feeds this real-time data to the cloud where it is analysed by the company’s proprietary algorithms to help better determine health trajectory and allow clinicians to intervene earlier. Four years after establishment, the startup has raised $11.7 million in funding and has transferred to the Bay area.
Invizius – The University of Edinburgh spin-off Invizius aims to improve the lives of millions of dialysis patients, with the help of its H-Guard Priming Solution. Designed to reduce the symptoms and complications as a result of patient’s immune response to extracorporeal circuit, this protein coating acts as an “invisibility cloak” for the filter, effectively hiding it from the immune system. The company is preparing to enter clinical trials now, following the latest investment of £2.8 million in September, 2019.
Machines with Vision are developing very accurate positioning technology for transportation applications. Founded in 2016, the startup has already offered its “precise positioning to within a couple of centimetres by fingerprinting and mapping the ground surface beneath a vehicle” to all Deutsche Bahn metering trains. Their RailLoc solution uses event cameras to detect changes and objects in the track bed in real time and simplify maintenance efforts.
Wootzano – Robots cannot really feel objects the way humans do. Or they can? Wootzano has the answer. They have developed Wootzkin, an electronic skin designed to allow robots to complete tasks requiring greater dexterity. Made of a specially-modified elastomer with metal electrodes deposited on top using photolithograph, Wootzkin would give robots a human-like sense of ‘touch’. From fresh produce handling to offshore turbines inspection, the application scope is limitless.
TravelNest – Founded in 2015, TravelNest is reinventing the way owners market their holiday rental properties. They offer a central platform for holiday rental hosts to manage all of their advertising in one place, providing a dashboard on the ads’ data and the property’s performance on all of the major channels like Booking.com, Airbnb, TripAdvisor and HomeAway in order to maximise occupancy. The startup has so far raised $5.3 million to build the future of holiday rentals advertising.
Prodsight is enabling businesses to gain insight from customer support conversation data. Their app makes this easy by automatically analysing conversations for topics and sentiment and producing a continuously updated report on the most common user issues. This allows data-driven decisions to be made quickly and efficiently, helping product teams to rapidly identify problems, education issues and prioritise fixes and improvements. Founded in 2017, the startup has been backed so far by Scottish angel investors and Techstart Ventures.
Administrate provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) training a learning management platform, designed to help manage and automate the process of delivering education.
Headquartered in Edinburgh, the company has grown to employ more than 100 people and has offices in the Middle East and the United States. In February 2019, Administrate secured £3.78 million in funding.
Administrate’s platform helps to solve the challenges of defining, delivering, tracking and analysing learning within an organisation and includes features to support personnel management and classroom management features.
