An entrepreneur seeking to protect vulnerable road users has highlighted the benefits of a North West base for growing tech start-ups.
K-Safe CEO Kirk Ryan praised the support on offer from NatWest’s Entrepreneurial Spark accelerator in Manchester, where his business is based.
“As part of the accelerator, we have met many other companies and individuals in our position and have benefited directly from the shared knowledge available,” he told BusinessCloud.
“We have had many meetings with investors and angels and have received lots of business advice and guidance.
“Manchester and Liverpool offer a skilled talent pool from which to recruit to grow the business… we are actively pursuing young talent for our development teams.”
He said about the upcoming event: “I would like to make some new contacts within the digital sectors across Manchester and the North West that could advise or provide contacts with insurers.”
Ryan, 30, founded K-Safe in 2015 after a friend was injured while riding his road bike.
“K-Safe has designed an intelligent safety platform called MiBB – short for My intelligent BlackBox – that allows insurers to de-risk their portfolio whilst providing detailed user profiling and enhanced interaction with their policyholders,” he said.
“Policyholders wear a portable sensor unit whilst performing activities such as motorcycling, cycling, and other activities in future.
“Whilst wearing the sensor, users benefit from real-time incident detection and reduced premiums on their insurance plans.”
He is now targeting commercialisation, with the goal of securing his first paying customer in 2017.
Manchester is the biggest digital tech cluster in the North with a growing ecosystem of tech entrepreneurs and scale-ups, co-working spaces and accelerators, investors and business angels, and accelerating business growth organisations such as the Business Growth Hub.
However it is missing one thing, according to Ryan.
“I believe that every major UK city requires a halo brand to represent the specialist sectors that have evolved from that local ecosystem,” he added.
“Digital is particularly strong in the North West and a regional brand would take advantage of the wide, diverse workforce and industry available today.”