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Immersive Technology Investment Accelerator: phase 2, SME projects

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Innovate UK, will award up to £2 million from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund’s Audience of the Future programme. This is for immersive technology research and development (R&D) projects.

This competition is a component of the £33 million ‘Audience of the Future Challenge’ funded through the UK government’s industrial strategy. Despite the growth of the immersive technology market, the finance and investment ‘ecosystem’ is undeveloped, particularly for early stage companies that need seed funding to support R&D and grow. This competition aims to address this by:

  • encouraging early-stage private investment in innovative immersive content, products, platforms, services, software and hardware, to give companies greater confidence that investment will continue after the project funding
  • giving management teams more time to run the business rather than continually chasing investment
  • removing the need to find match funding
  • giving companies direct access to investment partners’ commercial skills, knowledge and market opportunities

Your project must deliver innovation in one or more of the following areas:

  • the creation and capture of future value from the production of immersive content, intellectual property (IP) or experiences through the adoption and implementation of immersive technology
  • the development of tools, products, platforms or services for the creation, delivery or distribution of immersive content
  • the development of new software, hardware and/or development methodology that will enable immersive content to be created faster, more efficiently or in new ways

Who Can Apply:

Your project

Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £150,000 and £300,000.

Projects must start by 1 January 2020 and end by 31 December 2020, and can last up to 1 year.

Lead applicant

To apply you must:

  • be a UK-based micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) working with immersive technology, this can include spin-out companies
  • carry out your R&D project activity in the UK
  • intend to commercially exploit the results in or from the UK
  • apply as a single company, as collaborations are not permitted

Eligible SMEs can be:

  • producing immersive content
  • delivering new immersive products, software and services
  • developing new immersive platforms, hardware or devices

Innovate UK expect businesses who apply to this competition to be prepared for investment. Investment readiness resources and support can be found on Immerse UK.

Your Proposal:

Your project must have the potential to significantly advance the current ‘state of the art’ in the immersive technology field. The application and market for these innovations can be in any market sector, and within business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) markets.

Innovate UK define ‘immersive’ as technologies that blur the line between the physical world and the digital or simulated world. They create a sense of immersion, surrounding the audience or individual user so they feel completely involved in the experience.

Specific immersive, multisensory or interactive experiences mediated through technologies include:

  • virtual, mixed and augmented reality
  • haptics
  • advanced visualisation
  • other sensory interfaces

The aim of the investment accelerator is to fund innovative high-risk projects and invest in companies that have potential for growth. Innovate UK will achieve this by working closely with our investor partners. They will assess applications using the standard Innovate UK assessment process, while the investors will use their own assessment techniques.

Please see the general guidance to help you decide which category your project fits in.

Project Dates:

  • 20 May 2019, 10:00am - Live Webinar
  • 20 May 2019: Competition opens
  • 3 July 2019, 12:00pm: Competition closes

Interested in applying? We can help

  • Win Rate - Myriad Associates’ boast a 70% success rate with Innovate UK applications. 
  • Winning Application - We’ve had some of the highest scoring applications in Europe. Earlier this year we helped 4 medical Irish companies win a total of €14.9m in the Irish DTIF Grant Funding competition.
  • Honest & Trustworthy – We will not waste your time or money. If we feel your application won't succeed, we will tell you before we undertake the application process.
  • Maximised Application - Benefiting from our expert grant writers will ensure your claim is maximised.
  • Risk-free Eligibility Call – Call us for a free eligibility call to see if you have an application worth applying for.

Click here to discuss your application with one of our expert grant bid writers or visit Innovate UK to find out more.

Barrie Dowsett

This post was written by who is Chief Executive Officer at Myriad Associates . Click here to read more about Barrie and the Myriad team.

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