Case Studies

Innovation Grant Mentoring presents iBoxit.

Expanded polystyrene is probably the worst polluter in the world. We create, in boxes alone, 55 billion, of which 19% end up in the sea and 35% end up in landfill. It’s not biodegradable, and that’s why iBoxit was set up.

I used to trade in Scottish salmon worldwide, and whilst I was visiting one of the processing factories, I identified they had two significant issues. One of which was the short shelf life and wasted product in transit, and the other is the sheer volume of expanded polystyrene boxes used in the process. It’s important that we actually do something to redress the balance.

Grant funding is the only real way of being able to actually bring something to market. I’d never really considered it. I’d thought it might be too challenging; the success rate was very small.

However, Professor Shenke, who is at the University of East Anglia, suggested that there was an opportunity to get support from the Innovation Grant Mentoring Programme, which would help us to actually put together a bid which hopefully would be successful.

We were both astonished that we were successful. It’s the first one we’d ever applied for, and the consequence of that is we’ve actually brought three transformational products to market.

The value is huge. Without the mentoring programme, we wouldn’t have got the innovation grant. And for me, as a researcher and scientist, it made me see the value of what I do very differently.

The bid writer really helped us translate from our language to a language, I guess, the assessor would understand — the bigger picture and the vision of the company.

We had a grant mentor, and he was exceptional because he actually said to us what we need to really focus on in the application. “You have to make it sound as though without this, the world is going to collapse.” Therefore, when we wrote it, that was in the back of my mind.

It’s opened my eyes in terms of applying for grant funding. I’m not frightened now to actually apply, and I think that the opportunities that presents us as a business are quite significant.

The Innovation Grant Mentoring Programme is exceptional. I’d have no hesitation in recommending it to anybody who wants to go for a grant. It’s free support. You know, why not take it up? It gives you so much.

Without it, we wouldn’t have been able to bring to prototype three transformational products which will make a huge difference — not just regionally, locally or nationally, but worldwide.

Innovation Grant Mentoring.

Innovation Grant Mentoring presents Sketchbook Games.

I’m Mark Backler. I’m the founder of Sketchbook Games, based in Ipswich, and we make games that can have a positive impact on our players.

With Lost Words, we wanted to look at loss and grief, as well as being an engaging piece of entertainment. It could actually support people who were going through that in their real lives. And now, with the new project, Soul Garden, we’re wanting to look at mental health.

I heard about the Innovation Grant Mentoring Programme online, and it seemed like a really great opportunity because we’d applied to Innovate UK a couple of times in the past and we hadn’t had any success with it.

It seemed like a brilliant opportunity to have free support that can make such a huge difference for your business. Having secured the two grants that we have with their support has allowed us to grow our team by hiring several more contractors. So it’s really been instrumental in getting us to where we are today.

We’re definitely looking to apply for future innovation funding, and we’ll absolutely want to use the services of the Innovation Grant Mentoring Programme because it’s such a game-changer.

Having the support of a mentor to walk us through the application means you’ve got that person to check in with and you feel a bit more accountable.

Often, being a sole founder of a business can be quite isolating, so having someone to take some of the load off made it a less stressful process of applying for funding. Our mentor was able to translate some of the jargon and shape our application to give us the best possible chance of receiving the funding, which we did in the end.

He even came on the interview call at the final stage for the Mindset Grant, which was for £210,000. There had been hundreds of applications. Then Innovate UK interviewed 30 teams and only funded a small selection of those.

So we were really lucky to have the support of our mentor and the programme to help us succeed.

Innovation Grant Mentoring.

Innovation Grant Mentoring presents KIGO.

Every one to four cars in London is a school run journey. Pollution around the school gate affecting our children's health. KIGO solves the chaos of the school run, the stress to congestion, pollution and emissions and unsafe roads.

So, I decided to build KIGO, a mobile app to share the school run journeys with other parents. I realised how fragmented the data is. How there is no single tool to optimise the transportation.

Innovation Grant Mentoring for KIGO was an amazing support. It's about the idea and help you transform it to a level that you're able to actually build a business. It's so critical. It's support from someone from outside with years of experience, helping you for free and guiding you. What is the problem? What is the solution? And putting them on a piece of paper within a 100 words in order to get that funding or that recognition. If it's Department of Transport, Department of Education, Women in Innovation.

There are 3 layers to the platform. A layer for the local authorities with interventions like making roads safer and increasing active travel. A second layer is a layer for the schools to increase walking independent short journeys and gamifying it through rewards and recognitions. And the final layer is basically for the parents and the students to share the journey with other parents going to the same school. All in order to really solve the chaos of the school run.

So, we've approximately raised just over £20,000 so far, just from grants. So, it's very, very useful. Get all the support you can. Trying to build something that currently does not exist in the market, trying to change how people behave. It's really tough. It's not easy, but we are doing and we will because Essex is a really good place to start a business.

You have a lot of support from Innovation Grant Mentoring, especially on doing the one-to-ones that are able to within a short time to recognise the business model just to re-validate it. Shaping the value proposition and how are we actually going to make. So, it's amazing!

Innovation Grant Mentoring.