International product innovator GIobal Inventions Ltd is leading a procession of Hong Kong businesses to Cambridge from May.

The international marketing organisation, which supplies retail buyers in 38 countries, plans to set up offices in the UK technology cluster this spring and open in New York in September.

Partner Priscilla Smith told Business Weekly that there are five Hong Kong manufacturers – “all good friends” –  who also want to have a presence in Cambridge. She added: “The set up is fluid at present and we will decide the structure during our stay in May. We certainly have plans to scale up if Cambridge embraces us and it will be  several times bigger when we bring our Hong Kong friends to Cambridge around six months after our set-up.”

To date, Global Inventions has commercialised more than 100 inventions, often in large quantities. The business says its forte in terms of services provided to inventors and designers is taking an idea or raw technology to market on a global basis by delivering the 3Ms – marketing, manufacturing and money (it is also an angel investor).

Senior partner, Anil Vora, who lived in UK from 1964-1994, has a portfolio of properties in partnership with his family in London but is determined to set up an office in Cambridge.

The company says it is vetting a number of options for its new Cambridge product incubator. As part of a long-term strategy it is keen to replicate its Hong Kong/China model in the UK, US and elsewhere globally based around the two elements of its business model – the innovation incubators and what it calls “crowd funding with a twist.”

Global Inventions says it wants to engage with students, inventors, academics and ‘wannabe’ entrepreneurs. Vora qualified as a mechanical engineer from the University of Birmingham in 1969 and worked for a number of companies in UK. “I created a few inventions but no-one wanted to buy them. In 1994, I showed one of my better inventions called ‘Gusty’ to Tesco in Welwyn Garden City but was shown the exit.

“The buyer liked the product but did not have the confidence in terms of us executing the orders. We went back to the drawing board and asked ourselves what was really needed to take an idea to the marketplace.

“We say 3M, which means manufacturing at competitive price (like China) + marketing on an international platform (China because she is the factory for the world and all big box retailers have sourcing offices there) + money (the favourite word of a UK/US bank manager is ‘no’ and the favourite words of a Hong Kong bank manager are ‘can try’ ‘can do’).

“We also posed the question: If you go to Wal-Mart, Target etc in your city, what percentage of consumer items are made in China? The answer is generally between 50 and 95 per cent.

“We also asked what percentage of items Wal-Mart, Tesco, etc bought from Hong Kong and China: The answer was between 60 and  80 per cent with the rest from local importers.

“We were out of UK/US within a month; I went to Hong Kong as a poor inventor but full of vigour plus a positive attitude, implemented our three mantras, made a success and never looked back.

“Tesco met us in Hong Kong in 1996 and asked us for exclusivity but we could not offer it as M&S, Halfords and six more UK retailers had by now placed orders.” So why the reverse on the UK and US? Vora said: “Looking back our critics were right. Now the time is ripe to return with a strong track record in commercial innovation.”

Vora believes there will be many more deals in the Cambridge Cluster like the SoftBank swoop for ARM: “This is the beginning of a good story because I bet there will be at least five takeover deals exceeding $20 billion before 2020.”

Creating more entrepreneurs in the UK and US is a key plank in the strategy: “Looking at New York, for example – not unlike Cambridge – there are too many inventions to harvest but not enough farmers.”

Company inventions feature products across many industrial and retail segments, including online translator aids and a mosquito repellent smart watch. In June it is set to launch a novel ‘freshometer’ to tuck into baskets of fruit to keep produce fresher.

Vora concluded: “Tim Eiloart and David Southward of Cambridge Consultants decided to ‘put the brains of Cambridge University at the disposal of the problems of British industry.’

“We want to put the brains of Cambridge University/UK inventors and Stanford University/US inventors plus the legwork of Chinese factories at the disposal of the problems of world industry.”
 

One of Cambridge’s most successful ‘Dontrepreneurs’ – speech technology pioneer Professor Steve Young – is guest speaker at the Business Weekly Awards presentation dinner at Queens’ College on March 22.

Professor Young is ideally qualified to address the new wave of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technology that is boosting Cambridge’s reputational capital globally and increasingly attracting corporate investors and potential acquirers.

Steve is Professor of Information Engineering in the Information Engineering Division at Cambridge University. Since Apple’s acquisition last year of Cambridge speech recognition startup VocaliQ, where he was chairman, Prof Young now holds a joint appointment between Cambridge University and Apple Computer where he is a member of the Siri development team.

Prof Young was also behind another Cambridge trailblazer, Entropic – where he was chief technology officer – which was sold to Microsoft in November 1999.

Hermann Hauser’s Amadeus Capital Partners, backed both ventures and is a leading funder of the new kids on Cambridge’s AI/machine learning block.

Steve is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the RSA.

During 2001 through to 2004, he served as chair of the School of Technology and was a member of the university’s general board.

From 2006 to 2009, he served as an elected member of the University Council and from 2009 to 2015 he was the senior pro-vice chancellor responsible for planning and resources.

His main research interests lie in the area of spoken language systems including speech recognition, speech synthesis and dialogue management.  He was editor of Computer Speech and Language from 1993 to 2004 and chair of the IEEE Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee from 2009 to 2011.

Prof Young has won a string of international awards for his work and for broadening the UK’s knowledge base in a critical segment of technology.

Vocal IQ, for example, introduced the world’s first self-learning dialogue API – putting real, natural conversation between people and their devices. Every time an application is used it gets a little bit smarter. Previous conversations are central to it’s learning process – allowing the system to better understand future requests and in turn, react more intelligently.

Apple is believed to have paid somewhere north of $50m and up to $100m for VocalIQ as it sought the IP that would put Siri not just on a footing with but ahead of Evi, the technology created by another Cambridge business, True Knowledge which was acquired by Amazon in 2012 for around $26m.

Entropic had operations in Cambridge UK and Washington DC and was arguably the first real gamechanger in the space. Its advanced voice recognition and speech synthesis toolkits were the industry de facto standard and were used in research laboratories around the world.

Amadeus introduced Silicon Valley investors to the technology and helped management negotiate terms with Microsoft.

Sir Alec Broers, then vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, said at the time: “This is an example of Cambridge University’s outstanding innovative technology being helped on its way to the world marketplace by Amadeus.” Cambridge University was also a shareholder in Entropic. 
 

A £7 million makeover of Sepura’s former Cambridge city centre HQ is set to alleviate a critical shortage of Grade A office space in the burgeoning technology cluster, Business Weekly can exclusively reveal.

Agent Bidwells is hoping one of the city’s fast growing tech players or a major UK business keen to relocate to Cambridge will go ‘radio gaga’ for Radio House.

The revamped space will provide 43,388 sq ft over ground and first floors and will be available this summer. Bidwells says the spec is one of the highest Cambridge has seen.

Radio House is in Chesterton and is situated between the city centre and the northern fringe business parks; it has 114 dedicated car parking spaces and 156 covered bicycle spaces.

When complete it will meet BREEAM excellent ratings and provide a striking new double height main entrance, floor to ceiling glazing to the south with views overlooking Logan’s Meadow, a new air conditioning system, suspended ceilings on the ground floor and a ‘wavy’ roof on the first floor.

Sepura vacated the building when it moved to a new HQ at Cambridge Research Park. The quoted business is in the throes of acquisition by Chinese corporation Hytera.

Will Heigham of Bidwells, told Business Weekly: “Our latest data shows office market take-up exceeded 500,000 sq ft for the fourth successive year, a clear indicator that occupiers are still wanting to move to the city or upgrade to larger premises.

“Finding Grade A office space in Cambridge is a huge challenge at the moment because office supply levels have fallen to the lowest level for 15 years and availability rates are down to just 8.5 per cent. This means there is very little space available, let alone units of over 10,000 sq ft.

“Since One Station Square at CB1 was fully let, there is a shortage of available large Grade A office buildings. Radio House’s imminent completion therefore represents a real opportunity for existing Cambridge occupiers looking for new open plan expansion space or new entrants considering establishing themselves in Cambridge, one of the leading R & D centres in the world, which makes it a perfect location for hi-tech businesses.

“A huge amount of money has been invested in upgrading Radio House and it will provide efficient and substantial open plan floors, with flexible floorplates, that will appeal to a wide variety of occupiers from professional services to the technology sector.”

Cambridge is the home to a range of well known R & D, technology and life sciences companies such as Amazon, Illumina, AstraZeneca, Napp Pharmaceuticals, Samsung, Hewlett Packard, Toshiba, Microsoft, Amgen, Citrix, Huawei, Qualcomm and Apple.

More details on Radio House are available from Will Heigham on 01223 559 443.

Cambridge machine learning business Featurespace is scaling in the UK and looking to set up further US operations.

Eleven new recruits have joined the company in the first month of 2017, taking headcount to over 70 in Cambridge and London.

The company says the next key area of expansion is the United States after its success in implementing its ARIC technology for Georgia credit card services business TSYS as well as for a major US bank.

Featurespace, a global leader in machine learning fraud prevention using Adaptive Behavioural Analytics, has physically expanded both its UK offices and now wants to add to its North Carolina base to cash in on enormous potential across the Pond.

CEO Martina King said: “It is a very exciting time here at Featurespace; expansion is required to support our commercial successes.

“As a home grown Cambridge technology business operating internationally, we are proud to continue to invest in Cambridge.”

Featurespace moved its international headquarters to larger premises in Cambridge’s Broers Building to accommodate the new staff and add capacity for further growth. The London offices have moved to Bishopsgate in the City.

The expansion includes the recruitment of seven new members of the commercial team, including two subject matter experts in financial services and gaming, and four additional members to the engineering and data science team.

Featurespace was founded out of the University of Cambridge Engineering Department in 2008 by Professor Bill Fitzgerald and Dave Excell. Their pioneering research led to the creation of the world’s first Adaptive Behavioural Analytics engine, the ARIC platform.

The ARIC platform detects fraud for global businesses across financial services, including retail banks, payment providers and card issuers, as well as companies in Insurance and Gaming.

Featurespace has deployed ARIC to organisations that have services or products deployed in over 180 countries. Customers include Betfair, Vocalink/Zapp, Camelot, William Hill and TSYS, the largest third-party processor of Visa® and MasterCard® credit cards in the US.

The increased accuracy of understanding customer behaviour simultaneously reduces the number of genuine customers whose purchases and transactions are incorrectly declined – a solution that can save the payments industry $16 billion annually according to studies commissioned by Featurespace.
 

Cambridge serial entrepreneur Sherry Coutu has launched a new app-based initiative to smash through social mobility barriers and open up job opportunities for thousands more UK students – including those from low income families or disadvantaged backgrounds.

Workfinder is being piloted in Cambridge, Camden and Manchester and leverages the input of 15,000 growing businesses pledged to engage with students.

Designed to engineer more workplace experience for young people, Workfinder has been launched through Coutu’s Founders4 Schools venture; f4s has already helped generate 130,000 meaningful student-employer encounters via the sister founders4schools web-platform.

The rationale for the spin-off venture is that students often find valuable work experience through their parents – putting those from deprived backgrounds at a disadvantage. 

Government research reveals that students who lack a sufficient number of encounters with employers are four times more likely to become NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training).

Workfinder levels the playing field by helping all students prepare for the world of work – by working. The service launches within a climate in which 82 per cent of scale-up companies report that they could grow their company faster if the people who applied to them had the specific skills they required. 

Additionally, the CBI lists low levels of skills in the workforce as the single biggest perceived threat to UK competitiveness in the next five years.

Teachers use f4s services to invite local business leaders to encounters with students including speed mentoring, mock interviews and workplace visits. Workfinder builds on a highly successful three-year drive that has brought thousands of business leaders into classrooms to share experiences and explain the opportunities.

Like an ‘in-app purchase’, students are asked to present a voucher code to receive the joining instructions from the offer of a work placement they have received.

Founders4Schools has raised sponsorship for these vouchers to be made free to students at selected schools and will turn its attention to raising a syndicate to create a fund to allow vouchers to be distributed to every student in the UK who wishes to use the service to improve their employability. 

Vouchers can be made available in any denomination and f4s is seeking to distribute them to children who receive free school meals in particular.

Students, teachers and business leaders can engage with Workfinder via 
http://ift.tt/2jdZhc0

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Sherry Coutu

A majority stake in Cambridge University spin-out Cambridge Graphene Ltd has been acquired by AIM-quoted UK business Versarien plc for £170k – £25k in cash and the rest in shares.

Cambridge Graphene develops inks based on graphene and related materials using processes developed at the Cambridge Graphene Centre. The spin-out company has commercialised graphene inks for novel technology applications.

Versarien, headquartered in Cheltenham, is an engineering solutions company that delivers novel technologies for industrial applications. Through subsidiary companies, Versarien delivers targeted solutions as well as research and development into new, complementary technologies. The acquisition of Cambridge Graphene positions Versarien at the centre of the commercial development of graphene both in the UK and globally.

Cambridge Graphene was founded as a spin-out of the Cambridge Graphene Centre. The mission of the centre is to investigate the science and technology of graphene and other carbon allotropes, layered crystals and hybrid nanomaterials.

This engineering innovation centre allows partners to meet and establish joint industrial-academic activities to promote innovative and adventurous research with an emphasis on applications.

2-DTech, a spin-out enterprise from the University of Manchester, is an existing subsidiary of Versarien which also focuses on graphene-related technologies. Both the University of Cambridge and the University of Manchester are centres for excellence in graphene technology.

Following the acquisition of Cambridge Graphene, both universities will be ultimate shareholders in Versarien, with the expertise of both universities enhancing the company’s ability to pursue the market opportunities for graphene both in the UK and internationally.

Mark Shepherd, CEO of Cambridge Graphene said “This is an exciting development for Cambridge Graphene and will bring significant benefit to both companies, enhancing the prospects of technology developed at Cambridge Graphene, and Versarien as a whole.

“Cambridge Graphene brings novel graphene technology and expertise to Versarien and will benefit from Versarien’s manufacturing capabilities and broader reach.”

Professor Andrea Ferrari, director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre, added: “The ultimate goal of the Cambridge Graphene Centre is to help transition graphene and related materials from the lab to the factory floor. This investment shows that we are on the right path and we are thrilled to have Versarien join, via Cambridge Graphene Ltd., our growing list of industrial partners.”

Cambridge Enterprise, the commercialisation arm of the university, has supported Cambridge Graphene and its graphene ink technologies since the company’s founding.

Dr Margaret Wilkinson, technology manager at Cambridge Enterprise, said: “We are pleased to see further commercial activity from the Cambridge Graphene Centre. We look forward to working with Versarien and hope the acquisition will lead to exciting future developments and commercial opportunities.”

• Photograph by Francis Sedgemore shows Professor Andrea Ferrari, director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre. 

Cambridge clean technology front runner CyanConnode reports 2016 revenues of around £1.8 million – an increase of 560 per cent over 2015. The smart metering and IoT business also predicted a period of strong growth as it issued a trading update to the UK’s AIM market.

The company specialises in narrowband radio mesh networks. In the year to December 3, it says trading was in line with management’s expectations. Cash at December 31 was £3.9mn.

It said a significant portion of revenue growth was underpinned by the PVVNL and CESC deployments in India. CyanConnode added that the long-term nature of subsequent contract wins provides improved visibility going forward, with order backlog from existing contracts going into 2017.

As well as its global successes in the last 12 months, the company is licking its lips at the upcoming smart metering rollout in the UK. This will involve the rollout of 53 million gas and electricity meters nationwide by the UK government target date of 2020.

CyanConnode was selected by Telefonica and Toshiba to provide a software platform that uses narrowband mesh technology to complement Telefonica’s existing cellular network, allowing previously off-grid households to be reached as part of the UK SMIP.

Telefonica was awarded a contract as the preferred communications service provider in two out of the three regions tendered by the Government. Telefonica’s SMIP solution is based on its existing cellular network in the UK, supported by CyanConnode’s C4 solution, which connects households without reliable cellular coverage (known as ‘not-spots’ by the mobile phone network operators).

The CyanConnode software licence and support fees revenue is expected to be £25m over the life of the contract and the company says the 2016 milestones under the contract were successfully delivered.

Executive chairman John Cronin said the group had now established itself around the world with the leading system integrators and end users of smart metering solutions. 

He said: “We are delighted by the strong performance during the period with record revenues reflecting the strength and growing maturity of our model. We have good backlog of orders from India, Iran and the UK. 
“The global opportunity is clear and our ability to generate revenues in a number territories looks set to underpin a strong period of growth for CyanConnode.”

ARM chips are set to help power technology driving a new generation of smart cars for Groupe Renault.

The Cambridge processor architect joined the Renault-Nissan Alliance at CES in Las Vegas to parade an armoury of enhancements for electric cars and other connected vehicles.

Renault has developed POM, a compact and lightweight electric vehicle with bodywork parts removed and an open-source automotive platform. Available to start-ups, independent laboratories, private customers and researchers, it allows third parties to copy and modify existing software to create a totally customisable electric vehicle.

The collaboration has brought together a rich ecosystem of entrepreneurs, developers, designers, and engineers. ARM, OSVehicle, Pilot and Sensoria are Renault’s strategic technology partners. 
 
Providing processor design technology powering more than 80 per cent of mobile computing devices, Renault’s collaboration with ARM will open up the Twizy software and hardware architecture at the heart of the advancement to allow new features, including interoperability with ARM®-based connected devices.

The ARM ecosystem is scaling the ARM architecture to address a diverse range of automotive technology use cases in support of ADAS, IVI, autonomous driving, advanced cockpits and connected car. 
 
Richard York, vice-president of embedded marketing at ARM said: “Connected vehicles will enable new business models that deliver a broad range of choices and experiences for end users. The automotive industry will increasingly focus on the specific functionality that owners want, such as comfort level and entertainment. By providing this platform, Renault is paving the way for innovation in these areas.”

Pierrick Cornet, VP Engineering, Groupe Renault, added: “Renault has been making cars for more than 100 years and our industry is changing rapidly. Being able to work in all new ways, incorporating new technology with new scenarios in mind, ensures we’re constantly exploring new areas of transportation, connected cars, zero emissions and an easier life for our customers.”