AntennaWare through to InterTrade Ireland’s Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition Regional Final
AntennaWare, a wearable tech start-up, has been successful in getting through to the 2021 Regional Finals of InterTrade Ireland’s Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition in the 'Early Stage Company' Category.
The Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition offers start-ups and early-stage businesses a chance to get ‘investor ready’, mirroring a real-life investment process.
Successful companies could win a share of a €300,000 cash prize fund, secure expert feedback on their business plans and pitches, improve their investor readiness and gain exposure to investors, all while boosting their firm’s profile.
The competition is aimed at independent ventures incorporated on the island of Ireland (Ireland or Northern Ireland) in the seed, start up or early stages of business development and ideally targeting international markets.
AntennaWare is a wearable technology company based in Belfast. It was founded in 2020 as a spin–out from the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT), based at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB).
AntennaWare addresses the need for dedicated, high–performance antenna solutions for wearables, focusing on medical and sports.
Co Founders Dr. Matthew Magill and Dr. Gareth Conway have over 22 years of collective experience in the wearable technology sector having conducted extensive research at ECIT. ECIT’s Centre for Wireless Innovation (CWI), where their research takes place, is the largest research base in physical layer wireless in the UK and one the most innovative in the world.
Speaking about their pioneering technology, Co Founder Dr Matthew Magill commented: “AntennaWare’s patented technology can greatly increase the range and reliability of wearable wireless devices they are integrated into. The wearable devices can transmit further, with less dropouts and using less power, which helps facilitate applications thought previously impossible for medical monitoring, sports and fitness, wireless audio and wireless proximity detection.”
AntennaWare Co Founder Dr Gareth Conway added: ‘“We are thrilled to have got this far in InterTrade ireland’s Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition. We’re looking forward to the next stages of the competition and boosting the profile of AntennaWare across the island of Ireland. We are confident our antenna technology will be the go-to solution in the exciting and fast-growing wearable technology sector”
The pair came top in the electronics category of last year’s Invent competition for start-ups in Northern Ireland and secured a six-figure sum following a successful seed funding round led by QUBIS and Techstart Ventures as part of Invest Northern Ireland’s Access to Finance fund.