Image of Laura Mitchell and John Cassidy accepting their award, courtesy Chris Williamson
A company co-founded by chemistry PhD student Laura Mitchell has won the Cambridge University Entrepreneurs (CUE) Grand Finale of the Business Creation competition.
NG:Safe was awarded the top prize of £7.5 thousand seed funding, for best life science business in the Science and Technology stream. The award was funded by the CR Lowe Carpe Diem Enterprise Program. Three other winners will each receive £5,000 in funding.
Laura said, “We are absolutely delighted by this prize and will put the funding to good use! We couldn’t have done this without the help and support offered by our advisory board and academic partners, in particular Dr Lucy Colwell and [postdoctoral researcher] Tanya Hutter from the Chemistry Department.”
Co-founder John Cassidy is a PhD student at the Cancer Research UK Research Institute.
Laura came up with the idea whilst brainstorming hypothetical business plans for the Biotechnology YES competition she took park in last September.
NG:Safe is developing a rapid point-of-care device that aids clinicians in verifying the safe placement of nasogastric feeding tubes in the stomach. This safety check is critical to avoid potentially lethal misplacement in the lung, and is quicker and cheaper than an X-ray procedure, but more accurate than pH testing of gastric aspirates.
To enter the competition, Laura and her business partner were required to produce a 3500 word business plan for their company. Thirteen finalist teams from 40 entries were invited to pitch their ideas to a panel of investors at the ideaSpace, at the University’s West Cambridge site. Finalists also gave a 60 second pitch to a panel of four angel investors at the grand finale, held 12 May at the Department of Engineering.
Keynote speakers at the event included Lord Karan Bilimoria (Chair of Cobra Beer), Rahul Vohra (Founder of Rapportive, CEO of Superhuman, investor, advisor and previous CUE president), and Georgina Hemmingway (Founder of Footprint Cafes. Other competition categories included Social Enterprise and Software.
CUE is the UK’s oldest student entrepreneurship society and organises one of the most successful student-led business planning and creation competitions in the world. Since 1999, CUE has evolved to become a key part of the University of Cambridge’s ecosystem for supporting and accelerating entrepreneurship and innovation.