Scottish EDGE triple win for ECCI start-ups

ECCI's Climate-KIC-supported start-ups Clean Water Wave, Boxergy and Crover have together won £125,000 at the 13th Scottish EDGE contest.

The competition, which provides grants to accelerate growth in Scotland’s start-ups, awarded a record £1.8 million to two dozen promising businesses. The ECCI trio joined 39 finalists to pitch their ideas to the panel of Scottish EDGE judges, chaired by Simon Hannah of Filshill and Kerry Sharp of the Scottish Investment Bank, in a live session at the Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre.

Climate-KIC Accelerator start-up Clean Water Wave came away with £65,000. The social enterprise is developing a community-scale, very low-energy, water treatment system making it a long term, sustainable solution for rural or semi-urban communities across the world with an aim to providing safe, clean water to 10 million people in the next 10 years.

Fellow Climate-KIC Accelerator start-up Boxergy bagged £50,000. Edinburgh-based Boxergy aggregates capacity from local heat pumps to provide heat and hot water at lower costs and encourage the adoption of renewable power generation.

Recent ClimateLaunchpad Global Grand final third place winner Lorenzo Conti of Crover won £10,000 in the Wild Card EDGE category. Crover has created a robotic device to measure conditions and reduce waste in bulk grain storage. As part of their ClimateLaunchpad prize Crover will join Clean Water Wave and Boxergy on the Climate-KIC Accelerator.

Scottish EDGE is the UK’s largest business funding competition, having awarded over £11 million to Scottish businesses over 13 contests.

Evelyn McDonald, Scottish Edge chief executive, said: “Congratulations to the inspirational winners and also to our runners up who worked exceptionally hard to get this far.

We welcome the entrepreneurs awarded to our high achieving alumni of 313 previous Scottish EDGE winners who thus far have generated an additional £131.3m in turnover, secured £108.3m in additional investment and created 1,652 jobs.”

Clean Water Wave founder Stephanie Terreni Brown said: "The Scottish EDGE award is a real vote of confidence for sustainable, low impact technologies such as our Clean Aqua For Everyone water treatment system - it shows just how forward-thinking Scotland is in this respect and we’re honoured to be representing Scottish purposeful entrepreneurship and innovation.

"The support that ECCI has given Clean Water Wave via the Climate-KIC Accelerator programme is clearly paying dividends!"

Jim Laidlaw, Boxergy founder said: "Winning Scottish EDGE gives Boxergy the credibility and finance needed to kickstart our mission to fight climate change and reduce fuel poverty by selling low cost, clean heat.

Being part of the Climate-KIC Accelerator programme has given us the tools and confidence to take part in and win this award."

Lorenzo Conti, founder of Crover said: "We are extremely delighted to become part of the fantastic community of Scottish EDGE companies and to play our part in helping make sure that Scottish innovation leads the way worldwide! The support received will help us hire our first employees, move into our first office and take our product development to the next stage.

"We very much look forward to how much more we will learn and grow through the ClimateKIC Accelerator"

Back in June three ECCI supported start-ups won £125,000 funding in the 12th Scottish EDGE awards with entrepreneur Douglas Martin claiming the highest amount in the competition - £100,000 - for his start-up’s novel approach to algae production.

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