Cambridge Cleantech Venture Day – get your discount here!
Cambridge Cleantech is hosting a two-day conference this month as part of its 10th anniversary celebrations – and Cambridge Independent readers are entitled to a 20 per cent discount.
The two-day event begins on October 20 with Cleantech Futures: Exploring a Decade of Cleantech Innovation. Keynote speakers include Daniel Zeichner MP, Dr Beatrix Schlarb-Ridley of British Antarctic Survey and Carlota Sanz Ruiz, co-founder of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab.
Day two – October 21 – is Pre-COP26 Cleantech Venture Day. This is an opportunity to meet and network with the changemakers of the cleantech world: since starting in 2006, more than 275 companies have pitched at Cleantech Venture Days and €650m has been invested as a result of the events. Pitching sessions take place during the morning and afternoon.
Other speakers include Christian Inglis, head of urban systems, Innovate UK; Kalyan Sarma, external innovation manager, Johnson Matthey, and Gareth Ellis, energy & environment manager, facilities, Cranfield University.
“When we started Cambridge Cleantech in 2011, I would have never imagined that a decade later, we would be the UK’s longest standing and most successful cleantech network,” said Martin Garratt, CEO of Cambridge Cleantech. “Over the last several years we have seen climate tech move to the forefront of solutions needed to combat the climate crisis. Governments across the world, including in the UK, have adopted green growth as the key goal for the next decade. Our Cleantech Futures conference in October looks at how far we have come and what needs to be done in the coming decade to ensure we achieve the 1.5C target.”
The first day of the conference includes a series of talks celebrating climate tech innovation in the last decade, followed by an in-person reception at the Bradfield Centre in Cambridge. On October 21, there’s a pre-COP26 edition of our popular pitching-and-investment event, Cleantech Venture Day, in a virtual format. The Cleantech Futures conference is an opportunity to meet and network with the changemakers of the cleantech world, and to learn from the very best in the sector.
Cambridge Cleantech has been running Cleantech Venture Day in London since 2017 and last year we successfully pivoted to running this popular event to a virtual format. Here are some companies that have won big at previous pitch events:
- Cambridge Cleantech member Echion Technologies, who were invited to pitch by DIT East, won investment this year from Zero Carbon Capital and a group of other investors. The Series-A funding round has been led by CBMM – the world’s leading supplier of niobium products and BGF – the UK & Ireland’s most active and dynamic investor of equity capital in growth economy companies.
“Cleantech Venture Day is a great opportunity to meet like-minded investors and partners. We pitched at the March 2021 event and one of the judges’ VC fund ended up investing in our Series A,” said Jean de La Verpilliere, founder and CEO of Echion Technologies.
- Smart ventilation company Airex founder Agnes Czako won the Woman Innovator of the Year award from Innovate UK. The company, who pitched at Cleantech Venture Week 2020, won investment from Barclays after an introduction through Cambridge Cleantech. RADPropulsion is another Cleantech Venture Day pitch company that's done exceptionally well this year, winning investment from One Planet Capital and a slew of other investors.
- Companies that have pitched in previous years and grown massively since include bamboo hygiene products company Cheeky Panda, which is aiming to become the first crowd funded company to be listed on the stock index; and Propelair, who successfully crowdfunded in the middle of the pandemic.
All this points to a greater trend of increased investment in the cleantech sector. In an analysis of climate tech investments over the last 18 months where they tracked 1,000 investors funding climate tech deals, San Francisco-based Climate Tech VC found that investment in the sector was at an all-time high with no sign of abatement. In the first half of 2021, climate tech startups raised $16bn across 250 venture deals.
At the last event in March, the Cambridge Cleantech team facilitated more than 60 one-to-one meetings between investors and startups which were requested by the investors.
The Cleantech Futures conference is supported by partners Oxfordshire Greentech, Clean Growth UK, Business Isle of Man, JA Kemp, Granted, Allia Future Business Centre, Birketts , Consensus Business Group, KISS, Wallonia and GreenWin, Catax, Cheeky Panda, S-Tech and Yangzhou Innovation Centre.
The 20 per cent discount code for Cleantech Venture Day is ‘CI-READER’. Please note that when booking a ticket, you can then join the previous day’s event (anniversary) for free. Full details here.
