KPMG Tech Innovator regional finalists revealed

Published by

Nicky Godding

Farming by Keith Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

KPMG has revealed the eight regional winners of its Tech Innovator competition who will pitch for the chance to represent the UK at the global final next month.

The annual competition, which showcases tech innovators from regions across the UK, has been running since 2013.

Oxford-based integrated cancer biotech Infinitopes is the South Central finalist. In April the company secures £12.8 million seed financing to enhance its Precision Immunomics antigen discovery tech to target five more cancers.

Representing the South West and Wales as a finalist is Bristol-based Glaia. By directly targeting a plant’s photosynthetic process, Glaia says it is doing something that’s never been done before. Something with the potential to substantially increase yields, supports growing populations and protects the planet. By turning to naturally-occurring carbon-nano materials, the biotech discovered it could directly target photosynthesis in plants of all shapes and sizes, improving their ability to convert sunlight into biomass.

The Midlands finalist is Netzeronitrogen. It is developing a highly disruptive alternative product for the $200bn synthetic fertilizer market, helping farmers worldwide to achieve same or better yields for less cost, less effort and less damage to the farm and its environment.

Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.