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Billion dollar spin-out success for Imperial Incubator

The Imperial College London’s Incubator programme celebrate its spinout companies’ remarkable growth at a special ‘graduation’ event on Tuesday.

A hub for innovation and entrepreneurship, the South Kensington based Incubator provides office and laboratory space for science and tech based startup companies.

In less than a decade, 60 companies have grown within its walls, attracting £750 million ($1.2 billion) of investment.

The graduation ceremony, held on 21 July, celebrated the achievements of four companies that have outgrown the Incubator this year.

These include image recognition specialist Cortexica, which developed the FindSimilar software used by retailers such as Macy’s and Net a Porter, allergy testing service Microtest DX, clean cold technology company Dearman, and lung disease drug discovery firm RespiVert.

All are moving to larger facilities for their next stages of development, with Microtest DX taking advantage of new incubation facilities at the College’s White City Campus.

Imperial’s President, Professor Alice Gast, presented awards to representatives of the four firms to mark their achievements.

Graham Hewson, Incubator Manager at Imperial Innovations, said: “The graduating companies tonight are bringing innovative solutions to challenges faced by their respective industries and have achieved tremendous success so far in getting their products to market.

“We at the Incubator are honoured to have helped these companies at such crucial stages of their development and wish them the best of luck in their future endeavours.

“Since its founding in 2006, the Imperial Incubator has hosted more than 60 companies, which have collectively raised £750 million ($1.2 billion) in investment. This signals both the quality of companies that join the Incubator, as well as the positive effects of incubation during the early stages of a business. These companies and their experiences have helped establish the Incubator as an innovation hub at the heart of Imperial College London.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .