North West Investment Specialist, GC Angels, has been selected by Innovate UK to partner with it’s Immersive Technology Investment Accelerator, which aims to provide grant funding alongside private investment to creative and tech companies.

Up to £2m is available through the accelerator for UK creative and tech businesses to undertake R&D projects that enable immersive content to be created faster, more efficiently or in new ways through simultaneous grant funding and venture capital investment.

GC Angels will invest alongside Innovate UK and total project costs must be between £150,000 and £300,000. Innovate UK will provide grants up to 70% of costs dependant and business size with the remaining funds to be raised by either GC Angels or one of 10 other investment partners including major investors in this sector such a Creative England, HTC Europe, London Venture Partners and Warner Music.­­­­­

The funding will support companies who require funding and finance at seed stage to drive R&D and company growth whilst providing the runway for later stage capital and equity investment in the future.

The Immersive Technology Investment Accelerator opens to companies on 20th May in London, which will be followed by a series of events across the UK. The Manchester event will take place on 4 June at The Landing, MediaCityUK.

The competition is open to all UK based businesses with GC Angels supporting businesses across the North West, a brief and further details on how to apply can be found here.

GC Angels, part of the Growth Company, offers equity investment up to £2m. In addition, the company can prepare and prequalify investments, as well as invest alongside associate Angels and Investment Partners. Since its launch in 2015, GC Angels supported investments of over £20m in 30 businesses. As part of the wider Growth Company, Immersive Tech businesses can benefit from further Access to Finance support, the Made Smarter programme through their AR/VR specialist team as well as International trade support.

Established in 2007, the Government-backed Innovate UK programme has invested more than £2.5bn in 8,500 organisations, helping them to develop and realise the potential of new ideas. This funding has helped create over 70,000 jobs and added an estimated £18bn of value to the UK economy.

Damian Mohammed, Investment Director for GC Angels, who leads this project, will sit on the judging panel at the Manchester event. He said: “The immersive tech sector is maturing at a rapid pace and businesses in this space are seeking funding to realise their big ideas. However, the sector is being underserved by the finance and investment ecosystem as it is not developing at the same rate. A fast-growing but embryonic consumer market place is driving uncertainty with investors, making funding hard to come across.

“With its Immersive Technology Investment Accelerator, Innovate UK has addressed this gap in the funding market, and we’re excited to be a part of it. The North West is home to many forward-thinking tech companies, and this competition will boost R&D in immersive technologies and help them execute their ambitions.”

Two Altrincham-based creative agencies have teamed up to brand and publicise this year’s Greater Manchester Walking Festival, which runs throughout May 2019. PR and content agency Scribble has been working on the publicity and social media for the event while, design and marketing agency Sunny Thinking has created the branding, festival literature and digital presence.

The event is organised by Greater Manchester Moving in partnership with Transport for Greater Manchester. The festival team approached Sunny Thinking to create a simple website, the branding and design the marketing material, including the festival brochure, literature, and outdoor advertising. Sunny Thinking brought Scribble onboard as a communications partner.

As part of the ambition to make Greater Manchester the first ‘Walking Region’ in the UK, the festival is a fantastic opportunity to showcase the great walking opportunities and groups there are in Greater Manchester. The festival aims to encourage residents to get out and walk more often. 

“We’re absolutely thrilled to have been asked to work on this year’s Greater Manchester Walking Festival. The branding is fun and engaging and was aimed to inspire people of all fitness levels to just grab a pair of trainers and explore their local area and reconnect with friends and neighbours. We’ve really enjoyed working on the event and it fits well with our agency ethos of health and wellbeing,” added Jonathan Reed, managing director of Sunny Thinking. 

Helen Dugdale, founder of PR and content agency Scribble said: “As a proud  Mancunian, it’s been great to promote the delights of what Greater Manchester has to offer in walks. It‘s natural to overlook what’s on right under your nose, so helping people to fall in love again with walks on their doorstep has been really inspiring. Scribble has handled the PR for a wide range of events and the GM Walking Festival has been one of our favourites.”

Over £100,000 has been invested in a new virtual and augmented reality facility which was unveiled by Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, at The Landing at MediaCityUK.

Digital Catapult’s Immersive Lab, the first in the UK to be 5G enabled, has been created through a partnership between The Landing, MediaCityUK’s tech hub specialising in high growth tech start-ups, and Digital Catapult, the UK’s leading digital innovation centre.

The Immersive Lab contains a wide range of AR, VR and Mixed Reality equipment, as well as green screens, providing the ideal space for large multi-national organisations and rapid tech start-ups to collaborate, test and create new products.

During the launch event, Andy Burnham gave a keynote speech before digital innovators and VIP guests experienced the new facility first hand, hearing from industry leaders about the importance of immersive technologies and their potential.

The event ended with two panel discussions debating the future of augmented and virtual reality in a 5G-enabled world, and the implications of technology on society as a whole.

Digital Catapult’s Immersive Lab is located on the 6^th floor of The Landing, alongside Vodafone’s new 5G testbed and The Landing’s existing user testing facilities and rapid prototyping lab. The new Immersive Lab significantly enhances the facilities and equipment available to rapid tech start-ups in The Landing and global partners.

Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, said: “The new technologies created by and for 5G align perfectly with Greater Manchester’s industrial strategy and will help turn our ambition to be a leading digital city-region into reality. It’s also an amazing opportunity to bring to life a range of proposals set out in GMCA’s digital strategy.”

Paul Billington, managing director at The Landing said: “Our launch event has been a great success, with some fascinating insight from industry leaders and we’ve already had some incredible feedback on the facilities.

“The new Immersive Lab will drive innovation and collaboration for organisations large and small working with AR, VR and Mixed Reality.  It is a fantastic asset for The Landing programme, and all the tech innovators based here, as it will enable them to create new products and content.

“It will also enable us to host and deliver a series of new and highly innovative educational and training events as well as European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) workshops. We are continually evolving and expanding an already impressive range of high-tech facilities here at The Landing and attracting a growing number of multi-national corporate partners and accelerator programmes to enhance what we are already offering to tech startups in terms of support and infrastructure.

“Following on from our successful Metalab conference last year, the Immersive Lab is another big step forward for The Landing as the go-to location for AR and VR in Greater Manchester and supports our ambition to be the best place to grow rapid tech start-ups in the UK and beyond.”

Geraldina Iraheta, Director of Business Development at Digital Catapult, said: “It’s so important to have facilities like the Immersive Lab providing access to cutting-edge technologies which help small businesses grow and corporations seize the power of immersive tech.

“We’re pleased to welcome MediaCityUK to our nationwide network of Immersive Labs, and to work with our partners at The Landing in offering this facility to businesses in the region to showcase, demo and test innovative solutions and exciting creative content.”

Debbie Brown, Director of Service Reform at Salford City Council, said: “Salford Council is an award-winning, digitally progressive council with some great ideas on what we can do with this technology. Working with The Landing and Digital Catapult is a great opportunity for our citizens.”

Jon Buckthorp from Vodafone UK, said: “Working with The Landing and their tech start-ups we have tested both the live 5G network and the new mobile edge computing service. With ultra-low latency tests of 7ms and bandwidth speeds of beyond 200mbs this creates an amazing opportunity for the VR ecosystem.”

Manchester accountancy firm Mitchell Charlesworth has secured a raft of new client wins across Manchester and the North West.

Six local businesses have appointed Mitchell Charlesworth to provide a full range of financial and business advice services, including audit and accounts, tax planning, VAT, R&D tax credits, payroll and strategic planning. 

Mitchell Charlesworth’s new client wins include notable companies in its portfolio such as the award-winning North West recruitment agency, Jobwise, which has been assisting local businesses and job seekers for over 40 years and recently won a hat trick of awards at the Greater Manchester Business Awards in February; and Manchester-based HairShark, an innovative haircare tool that is the world’s first 2-in-1 backcombing brush and gives a perfect bouffant hairstyle. 

The firm has also been appointed by Thrive Media Group which owns Add People, one of the UK’s largest digital marketing agencies. Headquartered in Altrincham, the company specialises in helping SMEs with their digital marketing. It has 150 employees advising over 3500 clients across the globe on their digital marketing strategies. 

Other recent business wins for the firm include Urmston-based Kin Bakehouse & Kitchen, an independent cafe bakery business run by two female entrepreneurs; Rochdale charity Link4Life which encourages people to live more active, creative and healthy lifestyles; and Yozu, a specialist software development company that designs intuitive desktop and mobile applications.

Alison Buckley, partner at Mitchell Charlesworth’s Manchester office, said: “This is a very exciting time for us with such an influx of innovative and successful new clients and it really is a testament to the strength and expertise of the team that we are celebrating these wins.”

Jamielee Johnston, associate at Mitchell Charlesworth, added: “We look forward to working with our new clients and supporting their ambitious growth plans by providing strategic financial advice as well as general accounts and tax services.”