Category: Evidential

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10 UK Startups Complete Digital Catapult’s Augmentor Programme

Augmentor - Digital Catapult

Over the past four years, Digital Catapult’s Augmentor programme has helped numerous tech startups succeed in making their ideas a reality, like soft skills training platform BodySwaps and design tool Gravity Sketch. The latest programme has now concluded with new 10 companies worth keeping an eye on in the XR space.

Vika Books - Baby BSL
Image Credit: Jo Hounsome

For the 2020 initiative, Digital Catapult focused on a range of sectors within the industry, most notably architecture, engineering and construction (AEC), data visualisation, training and 3D design, production and tooling whilst also encouraging those working in AI or 5G. The 12-week programme is a great way for early startups to attract private investment and scaleup their plans quickly.

Those who were successful include Evidential which built VR training platform EVITA. Designed for major incidents, it equips police officers with essential soft and hard skills. The platform is Evidential’s second having created augmented reality (AR) app First Responder to improve the preservation of crime scenes.

Or then there’s Percept Imagery‘s AR platform Sprie which creates immersive shopping experiences for retailers and their customers. Ecommerce websites or social pages can use Sprie to make their products more accessible, thus allowing shoppers to see a digital product in the real world before buying it, great for household items for example.

Fracture Reality
Fracture Reality

“We’ve seen some amazing startups take part in Augmentor since the inception of the programme, and it was no different for this edition. The quality of the products and ideas was outstanding, and we’re thrilled to have played a role in helping to give these startups a boost towards investment readiness,” said Jessica Driscoll, Head of Immersive Technology at Digital Catapult in a statement. “Thanks also to our incredible investor partners and mentors who have been staunch advocates of the programme and instrumental in supporting these companies to bring them closer to becoming the next big thing.”

Take a look at all the successful startups from 2020 and previous years over on the Augmentor website. For further updates on the latest XR investments, keep reading VRFocus.

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Digital Catapult’s Augmentor Programme Reveals 10 new XR Startups

Augmentor - Digital Catapult

Now in its fourth year, during the summer Digital Catapult’s Augmentor programme announced an open call for UK-based XR startups. They’ve now been chosen, selecting 10 companies working across the immersive industry spectrum, from training platforms to augmented reality (AR) books.

Fracture Reality

They will now begin a 12-week programme to help grow their products and enhance their business model, meeting and learning from leading industry mentors and investors to attract more financing in a bid to scale.

The teams selected for the 2020 Augmentor programme are:

  • Emperia – “Is creating virtual reality experiences that boost sales and customer engagement for businesses in art and luxury fashion.”
  • Evidential – “Has produced EVITA, an incident training platform which provides large scale environments where multiple training scenarios can take place.”
  • Fracture Reality – “Developing an online mixed reality platform called Join specifically for engineering and data-intensive users that includes immersive 3D features like gestural sketching and avatars.”
  • MagicBeans – “It has developed Roundhead, a platform for creating and delivering six degrees of freedom spatial audio experiences at scale, so users can create, share and listen to spatial audio across multiple devices.”
  • MOONHUB – “Has created a high quality, immersive training product which uses virtual reality to convert e-learning solutions into interactive training scenarios to improve engagement in employee training.”
  • Overview Ark – “Created a tool for production designers and event coordinators to build 1:1 replicas of a live show without the need of programming knowledge.”
  • Percept Imagery – “Developed a unique augmented reality platform called Sprie that enables retailers to personalise online shopping experiences by allowing shoppers to try products in the real world before buying them.”
  • Retinize – “An award-winning content studio based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, that specialises in the creation of cutting edge immersive VR content as well as interactive and geolocative AR applications.”
  • Slanted Theory – “Through the power of 3D technology (XR) and immersive analytics, Slanted Theory has created “Alaira”, a cloud data analysis and visualisation platform which provides views of data unparalleled in 2D dashboards.”
  • VIKA Books – “Using augmented reality to promote British Sign Language (BSL) as a language for deaf and hearing children alike.”
Vika Books - Baby BSL
Image Credit: Jo Hounsome

“At a time when access to entertainment venues is restricted, online shopping has soared, and remote collaboration for work is more important than ever before as many of us remain working from home for the foreseeable future, this year’s Augmentor cohort are providing innovative, commercially viable solutions to issues that are important to us all,” said Jessica Driscoll, Head of Technology – Immersive at Digital Catapult in a statement. “What’s more, because Augmentor has always been about bringing investors and industry along for the journey, the teams see tangible results, from business support all the way to investment. We’ll be watching the next three months very closely and look forward to seeing the results.” 

In the past three years, 27 companies have taken part in Digital Catapult’s initiative, helping them raise a combined total of over £6.7 million GBP. These have included Somewhere Else which developed soft skills training platform BodySwaps, so it’s always worth keeping an eye on participants for the next big thing. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.