Today we can reveal the inaugural East of England Tech 50 – our ranking of the region’s most innovative technology companies.
KisanHub leads the way after securing backing from both an independent judging panel and our readers. Its enterprise SaaS platform is used by the likes of brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev, behind brands including Budweiser, Fosters and Stella Artois, to connect directly with farmers and promote sustainable growing practices.
The majority of the Cambridge business’ client base is fresh produce companies in the UK such as potato growers but it has customers around the world.
COO Giles Barker, who founded KisanHub with CEO Dr Sachin Shende in 2013, explained to BusinessCloud how it is helping farmers to optimise their harvests.
Expressing surprise and humility at receiving the accolade, Barker (below) said the key was keeping a start-up mentality.
“It’s always nice to be recognised for the hard work that our team is doing [but] I don’t think Sachin and I feel like we’ve been successful,” he added. “We aren’t satisfied with what we’re doing yet. We’re always pushing for more and hustling as much as we can.
“We need to bring new ideas to the table because if we don’t, someone else will come along – perhaps bigger or better-funded or more established – and start to copy what we do and take our market share. We need to make sure we stay at the cutting edge of bringing new technologies to our market.”
East of England Tech 50 ranking in full
The maturity of Cambridge’s deep tech ecosystem sees it host six of the top 10 firms in this year’s Tech 50, and 14 of the top 20.
Stevenage-based Achilles Therapeutics, one of many HealthTech firms, was voted into second spot for its work in developing personalised cancer immunotherapies.
3D holograph technology company VividQ, mobile payments firm Bango and Healx – which develops AI tech for treating rare diseases – also made the top five. All are based in Cambridge.
Pikl (Norwich), Safepoint (Norwich), Cambridge Cancer Genomics (Cambridge), Smart Networked Environments (Colchester) and Darktrace (Cambridge) made up the rest of the top 10.
You can see the full top 50 ranking, which was compiled from a shortlist of 104 disruptive companies creating innovative technology solutions, here.
The ranking was not open to large companies in other sectors with internal R&D departments, eCommerce retailers or technology infrastructure businesses such as telecoms. Agencies were required to be developing bespoke innovative solutions using the latest technologies to be considered.
The public vote on the shortlist attracted more than 500 votes. A panel of expert judges also made their choices. The final 50 ranking was decided from a combination of these.
The judging panel was comprised of Thea Goodluck, entrepreneur engagement manager (East of England), Tech Nation; Linn Clabburn, programme director, Cambridge Norwich Tech Corridor; James Gotz, director of ventures, Allia; John Gourd, CEO, Cambridge Network; and Jonathan Symcox, editor, BusinessCloud.
East of England Tech 50 is one of 11 annual regional ranked lists which will aim to shine a light on the companies of all sizes who are doing amazing things with technology.
We will publish one ranked list a month every year from February through to December. The rankings are accessible from the ‘featured lists’ dropdown on the website navigation above.