Pictured: David Chapman
Mazars' Midlands managing partner David Chapman has issued a
rallying call to the region's leading investors to be at the front
of the queue to back Birmingham-bred business talent.
International accountancy firm Mazars, with law firm Cobbetts,
is backing the 13 week Oxygen Accelerator programme which is
currently running in the Entrepreneurs for the Future business
incubator unit at Birmingham Science Park Aston.
The project is a global competition that has attracted some of
the best business start-up ideas in the world to compete for a few,
select places.
Staff from Mazars and Cobbetts are providing financial and legal
mentoring respectively as well as hosting five professional
training days where topics such as structuring growth finance,
intellectual property and business planning are explained to the
early stage management teams.
Nine fledgling businesses from all over the world are being "hot
housed" ready for the next stage of investment after the three
month course which began on September 1.
They will be parading their wares in a series of roadshows in
Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and London.
But it is the Birmingham roadshow on Wednesday, November 30,
that Mr Chapman hopes will draw Midlands investors to the
table.
"The first Oxygen Accelerator, a partnership between
entrepreneur Mark Hales and Birmingham Science Park Aston, has
attracted young businesses, not only from the UK but also from
India, Estonia and Romania. It received applications from 22
countries.
"Just over halfway through the first course, two of the new
enterprises are already revenue generating and all the businesses
have tremendous prospects," he said.
One of the business is already in talks with the 2012 Olympic
Games organisers and another is working on an idea with the Premier
League.
The ventures cover a wide range of technology-based sectors such
as ecommerce, mobile gaming, big data, video commerce, fashion and
logistics.
One business has developed a means of video tagging which will
enable product placement in films to be tracked and the viewer led
to the website of the product's retailers, another has invented a
mobile phone game which sees "monsters" created by scanning bar
codes, and others involve innovative solutions for fleet
management, recruitment and fashion retailing.
Mark Hales said: "Stage 2 of Oxygen Accelerator involves our
fledgling businesses parading their wares before an audience of
investors including high net worth individuals, venture capitalists
and private equity firms for an average investment circa
£250,000 which will help them move up to the next stage of
growth.
"The roadshows are taking place in London, Manchester and Leeds,
but it is at the Birmingham roadshow on November 30 that we would
like to see the biggest and best turnout."
Plans are already in place for Oxygen Accelerator 2 - which run
from April through June next year with applications being welcomed
from mid-December before a closing date of the end of February.
Mentors of Oxygen Accelerator globally include representatives
from Google, Amazon and Paypal, and cover areas such as design,
entrepreneurship, finance, marketing/PR and tech expertise.