Cambridge Enterprise Venture Partners 2024 – Investor Showcase
Tuesday 19th March 2024, 3.00pm – 6.30pm
Jesus College
Welcome to Cambridge Enterprise Venture Partners (CEVP) and our first Investor Showcase for 2024.
We are delighted that you have been able to join us at Jesus College. Today, you’ll hear seven exciting pitches from our portfolio companies who are all at various stages of their journeys and looking for investment. It is also our great pleasure to have Dr Vishal Gulati from Recode Health Ventures as our guest speaker.
Programme
15:00 – Welcome
15:15 – Start
Christine Martin DphilHead of the Cambridge Enterprise Investment Team
As Head of the Investment Team, Christine oversees our investment activities, with the team investing around £10 million each year in young companies.
With expertise in Life Science investment, Christine has a focus on drug discovery with a broad portfolio of technologies, including University of Cambridge spin-outs Carrick, STORM, Z-factor, PhoreMost, Qkine, and PolyProX. Christine was featured in BioBeat’s 50 Movers and Shakers in BioBusiness 2018.
Christine joined Cambridge Enterprise in September 2011.
15:20 – Showcase Pitches, Session 1
Presenting Companies:
Upfront Diagnostics
Increasing access to neurosurgical procedures for high-risk stroke patients.
Upfront Diagnostics develops innovative MedTech products that can help reduce disabilities and deaths. Their mission is to enable longer living and sustainable health for the people of the future. The first product that they have commercialised is the “LVOne”, a rapid blood test to detect stroke patients in minutes.
Funding Opportunity
Upfront Diagnostics are seeking £2M to start commercialisation of the “LVOne” in Europe and US.
Find out more
ConcR
Solving data to enable precision therapy for all.
Concr is a mission-driven techbio company that uses established methods from astrophysics to accurately predict patient outcomes and treatment response to novel and existing cancer therapies. Our unique approach allows iterative learning between disparate and fragmented data across all stages of a drug’s journey into the clinic, removing the need for ‘big data’ and yielding most accurate multi-modal tumour models.
Funding Opportunity
£7M priced round
Find out more
CardiaTec Biosciences
Leverage high-dimensional human omics data to better navigate complex disease biology to discover novel and differentiated therapeutics for cardiovascular disease
CardiaTec is a TechBio company employing computational methods to decode the biology behind cardiovascular disease. The company leverages large and high-dimensional human omics data to identify novel and transformative therapeutics.
CardiaTec has built the largest proprietary human heart tissue multi-omics dataset and has access to 65 hospitals for whole human heart procurement, with paired electronic health records and blood samples.
Funding Opportunity
£5M Seed raise
Find out more
Evoralis
Enabling large scale plastic recycling – making plastics truly circular. We target to enable recycling of over 80% of textiles within 2 years.
Evoralis is an enzyme development company, specialising in enzymes (biocatalysts) which can break down plastics for a truly circular economy. Evoralis is developing completely new commercially viable enzymes to enable the recycling of plastics like polyester (PET), nylon (PA) or polyurethane (PUR). Its initial focus is the textile industry where it could enable over 80% of all textiles to become recyclable within 2 years.
Funding Opportunity
We are raising between £2.5M and £3M total. In addition, two major fashion retailers have approved over £1M giving us revenue for the development of completely new enzymes for the recycling of nylon and polyurethane, using our ground-breaking ultra-high throughput screening technology on actual plastic particles.
Find out more
16:00 – Coffee Break
16:30 – Showcase Pitches, Session 2
Presenting Companies:
Illumion
Super-Charging Battery Development with Light
Illumion revolutionizes how we develop better batteries. They have developed the first Charge Photometry solution for battery testing – a rapid, affordable and lab-based microscopy platform – which enables R&D teams to directly visualize how energy is stored in a battery in real time, at sub-micrometer scales, and in realistic sample environments. Their data-driven approach speeds up material discovery and unlocks new possibilities for battery R&D in the pursuit of high-performance battery materials.
Funding Opportunity
Seeking seed funding of £1.6m+ to bring charge photometry to the battery market and secure market traction for our first product, the illumionONE.
Find out more
Cambridge Electric Cement
Driving the cement industry to zero carbon production.
Concrete is the second most used material on earth, behind only water. Cement is the binding agent used in concrete, and its production is responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions. Cambridge Electric Cement (CEC) has developed a technology for recovering and reusing cement from demolition waste making zero carbon cement a possibility.
Funding Opportunity
We are seeking £2.1m to establish an office and lab facility in Cambridge and to fund commercial operations to the point of volume cement production.
Find out more
Xampla
Taking abundant natural polymers and turning them into high-performance, fully biodegradable materials that can be used to eliminate the most polluting plastics.
Xampla engineers natural polymers to radically improve their functional performance, without any chemical modification. Their materials can be used to replace the most polluting plastics. Under their consumer brand Morro, Xampla offers a range of materials that are plant based and completely plastic free. Morro materials are strong, natural and fully biodegradable.
Funding Opportunity
Xampla is looking to raise £2-3m of funding to support commercialisation and scale-up driven by significant inbound customer interest.
Find out more
17:00 – Guest Speaker
Vishal Gulati
Dr Vishal Gulati is the founder and managing partner of San Francisco based Recode Ventures, a specialist VC firm investing in innovative healthcare companies globally. Prior to founding Recode, Vishal spent 15 years at leading venture capital firms, DFJ-Esprit (Molten Ventures), Atlas Venture and Oxford Science Enterprises. Vishal has since been invited to serve as independent chair/member of investment committees of other healthcare funds, including KHP Ventures, Cancer Research (UK) Seed Fund.
During his investment career, Vishal has backed over 40 companies developing ground-breaking treatments for unmet medical needs and has served on boards of numerous public and private companies. His work has supported the launch of innovative drugs, devices, and digital health products, impacting patients’ lives in nearly 100 countries.
Vishal trained as a physician in India and continued his postgraduate training and research at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford and Imperial College where he also held visiting faculty position from 2003 to 2008. He is a recipient of several academic awards including two Medical Research Council fellowships, the prestigious UNESCO MCBN Fellowship and the Rhodes Scholarship.