[Techtaffy Newsdesk]
Twenty businesses from across the UK have been shortlisted for the Cisco BIG Awards, as Cisco completes the first stage of its hunt to find Britain’s most inspiring and innovative start-ups and SMEs.
The Awards, which are running in collaboration with JP Morgan Chase, Bird & Bird, DNX and Octopus Communications, will take place annually throughout Cisco’s British Innovation Gateway (BIG) initiative – a five-year investment of cash, technology and human resources.
In its inaugural year, the Cisco BIG Awards is celebrating shining examples of the UK’s most enterprising small businesses. The categories include BIG Data, Collaboration, Future Cities, Internet of Things and Mobility. A judging panel from Cisco worked through the 300 entries, to shortlist 20 semi-finalists. From this 20, six finalists will be chosen to present their business plans live to a judging panel before the winner is chosen.
The overall winner will receive a total prize package of approximately $200k, made up of $100k cash, 12 months of mentoring from Cisco and a 12- month support package covering PR, marketing and legal services. Runners-up and semi-finalists will also receive cash and technology prizes to support and accelerate the development of their brands and businesses.
The full shortlist is:
BIG Data
- Umbee Limited – Flexible Pay-As-You-Go Cloud Hosting
- Shopitize Ltd – Transform Receipts into Personalised Mobile Shopping Assistant & Rewards
- Playback Holdings Ltd – Playback Rewards (PBR) – Targeted television advertising with full privacy protection
- Metric Science Ltd – Metric Science – empowering advertising professionals with the knowledge necessary to better evaluate their media
Collaboration
- Six3 Limited – Six3 Video Messenger
- Portal Entertainment Limited – Immersion GO – A storytelling platform for the digital age
- Rabbitsoft Ltd (clinked.com) – Clinked – Collaborating for More Efficient Business
- TBC – TES Brightspark online tuition – global collaboration
Future Cities
- KlickEx UK Limited – The World’s Most Accessable Economic System
- Nervecentre Software Ltd – Improving patient safety and hospital productivity through collaboration
Internet of Things
- The Clinic Finder Limited – Helping clinics meet new patients and patients find clinics
- Poikos Limited – MeasureCAM_
- Sion Buckler – Location Based Social WiFi Access and AdPlatform Innovation
- Digital Shadows Ltd – Digital Shadows
- WhipCar Limited – WhipCar – Rent the Car Next Door
Mobility
- Snap Fashion Ltd – Snap Fashion – A Visual Search Engine for Fashion
- ParkatmyHouse Ltd – Community Parking
- HipSnip Limited – HipSnip – shopping questions, answered
- TBC – mentorwell.com – boosting talent with social mentoring