FIVE tech firms based in the north have been selected as regional winners of Tech Nation’s Rising Stars 3.0 competition.
The UK Government-backed initiative promotes innovative and early-stage tech companies.
Derry’s Elemental and Newry’s Esther join three Belfast firms: Budibase, Selazar and SureCert.
The competition offers pitch training and helps open doors to potential investors.
Gary Davidson, entrepreneur engagement manager for Tech Nation in Northern Ireland, said: “Living in a strange 2020, it’s fantastic our Rising Stars competition will showcase to the world some of our amazing Northern Irish founders.
“I can’t wait to see our five regional winners represent Northern Ireland this year; Elemental Software, Budibase, SureCert, Esther and Selazar.”
The Five Northern Irish regional winners:
Budibase (Belfast, Data Analytics & Business Intelligence)
Founders: Michael Shanks, Joe Johnston and Martin McKeaveney
Building custom software for your business in minutes, without coding, Budibase is an open source, nocode platform used for building web applications, to digitise your business. Small to medium sized businesses and digital consultants use Budibase to build and host apps, or for supporting their self-hosted deployments.
Elemental (Derry, Healthtech & Biotech & Life Sciences)
Founders: Jennifer Neff and Leeann Monk Osgul
Elemental is an award-winning tech for good company with the purpose of empowering and enabling individuals, families and their carers to better connect into community-based programmes, services and interventions that make a positive impact on their lives. Through an innovative digital platform, it provides teams with the technical connectivity they need for multi-sector partnership working, leadership, and the measurement of mobilisation of support where needed.
ESTHER (Newry, Fintech)
Founder: Carol Rossborough
ESTHER is a corporate giving platform which allows businesses to engage across a range of cause-based charity programmes. It simplifies and automates corporate giving - allowing businesses to give directly to verified people in need in the community. Solving real problems, leaving a real legacy with live impact reporting, its USP is the ability to give directly to verified people in need in your own community.
Selazar (Belfast, Ecommerce & Marketplace)
Founders: Jack Williams, Kevan Bishonden and Gareth Burns
Selazar is a tech-first company automating retailers' entire eCommerce operation through its single fulfilment platform. Selazar automatically picks, packs, stores and ships products with up to a 40% saving compared to other fulfilment providers. The end-to-end solution encompasses stock management, deliveries and returns for the retailer allowing them to scale their business without the heavy lifting.
SureCert (Belfast, HRtech)
Founder: Ian Savage
SureCert is a digitised background checking platform, enabling recruiters to confirm quickly that candidates are who they say they are, have done what they have said they have done and have nothing in their backgrounds that would stop them from working in regulated sectors.
