Downing Enterprise 2021 // The Results

We are pleased to announce that all the teams that participated in the 2021 Pitch Event have won cash prizes and an invite to another round of pitching in June for a larger investment sum:

Cambridge Nucleomics £2000

Where You At £2000

Cleave £1000

Plastalyst £1000

Vesma £1000

ChinHubs £1000

Well done to all of the teams that took part in this year’s Downing Enterprise competition!

On June 16th 2021, Where You At, Vesma, ChinHubs and Cambridge Nucleomics pitched for a second time to secure further investments, along with Mydflower, a sparkling elderflower wine company founded by Downing alum Michael Dew-Veal. Following the second pitch event, the Board were extremely impressed with the quality and viability of the presented business plans. We are pleased to announce that four teams have succeeded in securing investment sums from Downing Enterprise:

THE TEAMS

“Where You At (“WYA”) is an App allowing users to map and contact friends in venues without signal such as nightclubs, festivals and stadiums. Using bluetooth, users turn on their specific location tracking so that a selected circle of friends can turn into a personal security network for the evening. Pressing the SOS button in an emergency alerts their inner-circle, timestamped for easier police reporting and providing insights on vulnerability to the venue. WYA wants to help ‘build back safer’ after the pandemic, helping people to feel less vulnerable without losing their freedom.”

“Vesma is a gravity-powered extraction fan that reduces indoor air pollution caused by the burning of fuel. Vesma’s innovative design differentiates it from competitors, as it uses a non-electric gear mechanism. This inventive product can be easily fabricated, assembled and maintained, allowing it to target high-risk rural and urban communities with minimal electricity access. To further incentivise use, the fan powers a USB charging portal.”

“We want to set up ChinHubs, a second-hand e-commerce platform targeting the market of 50 million overseas Chinese, to addresses the problems of low transaction efficiency in traditional ways used by overseas Chinese for used goods trading and to seize the opportunities driven by (i) the large and increasingly growing population of Chinese in the UK and EU, (ii) China’s strongest purchasing power parity (PPP) globally, and (iii) the widely accepted concept of eco-friendly by Chinese. ChinHubs has abilities to obtain plenty of users in a short time at a low cost and spread quickly, generating profit within three years. We are a professional and united team with start- up experience.”

“Cambridge Nucleomics aims to bring about the next-generation epigenetic analysis at the single-molecule level by combining DNA technology with solid-state nanopores. Unique advantages include identifying hundreds of short-length RNAs and discriminating multiple types of DNA damage and modifications simultaneously. Our technology has the potential to revolutionise future cancer diagnostics and patient stratification, in addition to many other diseases and applications. Built on decades of ground-breaking research from Prof. Keyser’s lab at the Cavendish in Cambridge, the vision is to build an innovative platform technology company as well as a data company, thereby transforming precision and personalised medicine in future healthcare.”