High tech start-ups in Bristol and Bath are benefiting from a £2 million boost.
Twelve small companies in the region have been awarded money from the West of England Growth Fund with Blu Wireless Technology, as revealed in my last blog, given £1 million for its development programme.
The Growth Fund administers UK and European matched funds for the region and has already awarded over £11 million to small and medium sized companies.
All of the companies are in the Bristol or Bath centres of the SETsquared incubator.
Businesses in Bath receiving funding include app developer neighbourly (£94k), Clean Energy (£27k), Citeab (£26k), Tivarri, Envolve Technologies (£132k) and CloudFind (£90k).
”I’m delighted that our companies have benefited from this investment by the West of England Growth Fund – the grants will now leverage additional multi-million pound private investments into these companies,” said Simon Bond, Centre Director of Bath SETsquared and the University of Bath Innovation Centre.
Bristol businesses in receipt of awards include Digital TV Labs (£233k), Blue Speck Financial (£220k), AptCore (£80k), Nanoscope Services (£40k) and SecondSync (£100k).
“Bristol and Bath has some fantastic tech businesses – in software, internet technology, electronics, semiconductor, biotech and across all sorts of sectors. These awards will make a massive impact into jobs growth here – and SETsquared has a track record of businesses growing steadily without failing, so these are high-value, sustainable jobs,” said Nick Sturge, Bristol SETsquared Director.
Paul Wilson, chief executive of the West of England LEP, says: “Through this fund we have already invested around £14m, which has attracted more than £41 million of private sector investment into the local economy, creating or safeguarding over 1,500 jobs.
“High tech is a significant area of growth for us – we already compete internationally and our region is nurturing a future generation of high tech businesses.”
