Meet Europe's Tech Rocketship scaleups on the fast track to global growth

I’ve just been handed a list of some of Europe’s highest-potential tech scaleups... our #TechRocketshipAwards finalists. An incredibly impressive list it is too. 

The awards identify the highest-potential, most innovative tech businesses in Europe, Israel and Turkey and have previously been run in India, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. This is the second iteration of our European awards, and the quality is higher than ever. 

Over the past 6 months my Department for Business and Trade colleagues, aided by esteemed judging panels and partners including Tech Nation , techUK , EY , Goodwille. , and our own Global Entrepreneur Programme, have been whittling down 250+ high quality applications from tech entrepreneurs across the whole continent.  

Around 20 Tech Rocketship alumni have already taken advantage of DIT support and invested in the UK to further their growth, including Plan A from Germany, Docmatic from Poland, SeeTrue AI from Israel, Geckomatics from Belgium, and Slovakian battery innovators Inobat. A very warm welcome to you!

Why tech businesses choose the UK as a location to scale

The UK offers a great environment for ambitious businesses looking to grow, with tax breaks for R&D, innovation clusters, finance, tech-savvy customers and a network of support across the whole country.

I would also like to stress how much the UK welcomes international investment, particularly in tech, because we recognise how much the UK itself gains from innovative technologies, ideas, and the job-creation that brings. Our world-beating tech offer is built on a foundation of multi-national collaboration.  

The links between international investment, markets, academia and business are what make the UK a truly global science and technology superpower. There are innovation clusters and catapults across the whole of the UK, hubs of expertise in sectors ranging from agri to cyber, mobility to packaging, marine economy to space, and much more... For the development and uptake of advanced digital technologies, the UK ranks 1st in Europe and 3rd in the World. (Source: Digicatapult) 

Put simply, the UK is the world’s petri dish for innovation and expansion. 

And going more deeply, let’s look at the numbers and where we stand next to other countries.  The UK ranks 2nd highest in the world for start-up funding in 2022 - above India and China, behind only the US - and UK tech has raised double the funding of any other European market so far in 2022. (Source: TechNation). If you’re a tech business looking for an environment where you can access the capital to help you to make that next giant leap, this is where you need to look.  

Our network is here to help you on that journey. The Tech Rocketship winners will each receive a fully-curated growth programme, providing them access to the VCs, incubators, customers, and growth ecosystems most relevant to their innovative technologies.

If you're not a Tech Rocketship entrant, we can still help, so please do take advantage of our support, either by connecting with UK government representatives in your country or via the following link (great.gov/international). 

The home of the unicorn  

The UK has so far produced over 120 unicorns (billion-dollar companies) and is home to a further 258 startups on the potential future unicorn track, more than double any European neighbour. Last year the UK more than doubled its share of decacorns too, $10bn companies such as Revolut, Wise and Ocado. 

And it’s not just about London.  A further two UK cities – Bristol and Oxford - rank among Europe’s top 20 future unicorn cities. Scotland is a fast-growing hotbed of innovation in space, gaming, life sciences, and more, and boasts unicorns including SkyScanner, BrewDog and FanDuel. 

Let’s meet the Tech Rocketship finalists, and find out what happens next... 

From sifting of local entries, through individual country finals, quarter finals, semi-finals announced at London Tech Week, and now down to the final 6 remarkable companies...

Congratulations, and good luck to all the finalists!

• 5G: Neutroon - Spain. An open-API cloud platform that makes private LTE/5G and Neutral Host simple and scalable for operators and end-users. link 
• Cybersecurity: Facephi - Spain. Provides secure user digital identity verification and specialises in digital onboarding and biometric authentication solutions.
• Climate Tech: Monolithos - Greece. Manufactures direct-fit aftermarket automotive catalytic converters.
• Digital Health: Enbiosis - Turkey. Analyses the human gut microbiome using metadata and AI to provide personalized health and wellness solutions.
• AI: Jungle AI - The Netherlands.  Applies AI to increase the uptime and performance of electromechanical assets such as wind turbines, solar farms or industrial production lines.
• AgriTech: Blue White Robotics - Israel. A 'Robots-as-a-Service' platform that provides the capabilities for building autonomous farms.

Our expert judges Priya Guha MBE , Christian Kumar 😃 and Jude Ower MBE will choose Gold, Silver and Bronze winners. They will also announce the winner of a new Diversity in Tech Award, specifically to address the proven shortfall in funding (Source: TechCrunch/Atomico) across Europe for diverse tech businesses and celebrate those trailblazing businesses who are bucking the statistics.

Our ambition is simple with the award: to shine a light on the paucity of funding for diverse businesses and to help connect our winners with the funders and supporters that can help them thrive and grow.  

I urge tech businesses of any country or background to get in touch with your local DIT contacts to find out more about how the UK can help you achieve your global ambitions. Tech entrepreneurs should look further into the The Global Entrepreneur Programme (GEP) which offers mentoring and business support to non-UK based founders to help them set up and scale their business from a UK global headquarters.

On 1-4 November, the UK will host a pavilion at Web Summit Lisbon. This is when the grand finale will take place, and this is where we will announce the winners of the Tech Rocketship Awards 2022.

I look forward to seeing you in Portugal!