Imperial triumphs at royal start-up competition
'Unmade' took home the grand prize
The Duke of York’s Pitch@Palace competition, held this year’s finals at St James’s Palace on Tuesday, with Imperial entrepreneurs taking home both first and third place.
Unmade, a 3D-printed knitwear startup came top, with Baby LifeBox, a low-cost baby incubator, taking third position.
Founded by Imperial alumni Hal Watts and Ben Alun-Jones, alongside RCA alumnus Kirsty Emery, Unmade (formerly Knyttan) created software that allows clients to digitally design knitwear and produce them on demand, “turning knitting machines into effectively 3D printers for clothes”, according to Watts.
Currently based at Somerset House, with three knitting machines and 22 members of staff, Unmade aims to change the fact that “clothes are designed for everyone and made for no-one” through their software, while also tackling the morally dubious use of cheap labour in the production process.
The other Imperial success story, Baby LifeBox, was created by current student Malav Sanghavi, and provides basic facilities for babies in their first days of life, such as “warmth, monitoring and a germ free environment.”
Designed for use in developing countries, the incubator is made from cardboard, with its bottom half also functioning as a make-shift cot.
Shanghavi also received a £500 grant from Imperial College Advance Hackspace prior to Pitch@Palace, intended to help him develop his prototype incubator.
Imperial has responded positively to the news, with Professor David Gann, Vice President (Development and Innovation), commenting that “both Unmade and Baby LifeBox exemplify the spirit of entrepreneurship we prize at Imperial,” and extending an offer to all Pitch@Palace participants to “locate with us” at Imperial’s recently re-branded White City Campus.
The second-placed company on the night was Appear Here, a startup which enables pop-up shops to locate available spaces across London. Other runners up included Toothscan, which can identify dental issues early on in development, Polysolar, an alternative system of solar panels, and Yellowdog, a crowd-sourced render farm intended to provide 3D animators with easy, cheap processing power.
The bootcamp stage of the competition took place on Queen’s Lawn several weeks ago, with Prince Andrew in attendance. Two weeks later he was back at Imperial, with China’s President Xi.
