Elevate – 2021

Elevate 2021 was the University of Exeter’s third year participating in the Engineers in Business Competition and was led by the Student Startups Team. The Elevate competition is a unique opportunity at the university for student engineers to access targeted early-stage venture creation support, exploring innovation beyond their curricular project-based learning. Students were supported by a dedicated member of the Student Startups team working specifically to engage students from Engineering degree programmes and enable them to explore entrepreneurship outside the lecture theatre.

First Prize Winner: Zama Digital

James Tetlow, Mechanical Engineering – £1,500 Engineers in Business Prize

Zama Digital provides a machine monitoring solution for manufacturers, offering real-time insights from manufacturing machinery to improve the efficiency and profitability of operations.

Second Prize Winner: Augmented Reality Creations (ARC)

Andy Clear, Natural Sciences; Zack Tuff, Computer Science, Swansea University; Kris Woolhouse, Computer Science – £1,000 Engineers in Business Prize

ARC develops augmented reality technology tools and their product, InPlace, provides an app to enable in-situ visualisation of home improvement and conservatory models.

Third Prize Winner: Htubs.com

Dan Hutchings, MEng Energy Engineering – £500 Engineers in Business Prize

Dan started his business, Cornwall Hot Tub Hire while studying. He very quickly found that demand outstripped supply and began developing Htubs.com, an integrated platform connecting hot tub owners and other hot tub hire operations with customers wishing to hire their products.

Positive feedback

The Elevate competition this year was yet another roaring success, providing an opportunity for some of the amazing Start-up ideas at the University of Exeter to be brought to life and flourish in the limelight.

The SSU team has done an amazing job, yet again, working on a 1-2-1 basis with each start-up to prepare them for the competition, resulting in some truly exciting pitches from an entrepreneurship and engineering perspective. This year showcased just how versatile our engineers are, with business ideas from hydrogen generation to fitness apps to geothermal exploration kits, and a lot more! I am immensely proud of all those who were a part of Elevate this year; Including those that took a leap out of their comfort zone to throw their hat in the ring, I hope to see those again this year, with many more budding entrepreneurs throughout CEMPS taking part!

Ceri Howells, Senior Lecturer in Engineering with Entrepreneurship
University of Exeter