Impact from innovation in Pi Labs Cohort 11
With Demo Day just around the corner, I’m taking the opportunity to reflect on the 5 amazing businesses that we’re supporting this year, and how they align with our purpose at Pi Labs.
At our core, we are investors in change. Change that has purpose and potential to positively transform the environment, communities, and businesses around us for the better.
The visionary founders and businesses that make up our 11th Cohort are tackling some of the most pressing environmental, social, and governance challenges we’re faced with today, and I’m very proud that Pi Labs is backing these teams and joining them on their journey.
Below I have outlined each of the companies, and why we feel they align with our vision for the future of built world. It’s our most diverse cohort to date, with huge potential to shape future of our cities, communities and businesses.
Join us at Fora Spitalfields next Thursday, 25 May 2023 at 10am to hear from them directly.
Airmo
One of the key challenges of tackling climate change and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions is understanding them. Despite 85% of companies expressing concerns about reducing emissions, only 9% are able to measure their emissions comprehensively, with error rates ranging from 30% to 40%. Solutions in the market today primarily rely on analytical & model-based estimations or low quality and expensive measurement tools. It’s simply not good enough.
Airmo is tackling this problem … from space. By leveraging the latest micro-LiDAR and small satellite technologies, Airmo is creating the capability to monitor and track the planet’s health in near real-time, with the highest possible accuracy. With experience in carbon management, combined with designing, manufacturing, assembling, and successfully launching 11 satellites in previous roles, their team is uniquely placed to provide private and public organisations and governments with the data and insight that can significantly reduce climate risk and empower better decision making.
We’re incredibly excited to support Airmo on their journey and witness the impact they will have on how GHG are monitored.
Ambr
The inception of Ambr came from the founders’ own experiences. Zoe, Steph, and Jamie all worked in fast-paced environments across the big 4, as well some ultra-high-growth consumer start-ups. They became very aware of a huge disconnect between what most organisations spend on wellness, and the need to reduce the actual root causes of burnout across teams and companies. Ambr was established to help organisations create more sustainable work cultures and provide a better balance to meet the needs of today’s workforce — be that in-office, remote or hybrid.
Anonymous, objective, and real-time data is fed through Ambr’s proprietary AI to identify trends and surges in stress and burnout risk factors. These trends and insights are shared with managers who can be proactive — rather than reactive — in the management and prevention of stress in the workplace.
Kertos
Kertos is tackling governance at its core. As industries digitise at enormous scale and pace, we’re seeing a huge increase in data creation — privacy then becomes complex to manage. Privacy is a defining social, governance and corporate issue of our time — especially in the fast-digitising sectors such as real estate where there is so much risk inherent in the transition from analogue — and we feel it’s imperative that it’s kept efficient and accurate.
A team with strong legal, technical, and product background, Kertos automates privacy operations, enabling a new generation of compliance adherence. Via the platform, companies can connect, discover, and operate operations in one space, to ensure that compliance insights are generated and acted upon in real time.
Trunk
We’re all too aware that buildings and the built environment accounts for as much as 40% of all Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG). Offsite construction, which doesn’t require as much heavy machinery and uses up much less energy than traditional methods of construction, has the potential to slash that impact enormously.
In reality, ‘prefab construction’ still suffers from inefficient coordination, both in terms of construction on the factory flow, delivery to construction sites, as well as significant rework costs. Trunk provides a solution by empowering prefab manufacturers with streamlined project collaboration, coordination, and delivery. Their software seamlessly integrates manufacturing execution with on-site assembly, minimizing downtime, enhancing build quality, and accelerating project completion by 20%.
We believe offsite construction provides a compelling answer for tackling one of the biggest sustainability challenges we face today, and Trunk is the key to unlock its potential.
Untap
Understanding the health of our communities is an integral part of preventing epidemics and pandemics, and one of the most trusted methods of monitoring health at a large scale is through wastewater surveillance.
This, however, is a technology that has been used since 1940s and doesn’t come without its challenges. It’s slow, expensive, and can also be inconsistent, all as a result of its manual nature — samples must literally be scooped out of our sewers and taken to a lab to be analysed.
With their 25 years of water tech experience, Untap brings this technology into the 21st century. Their patent-pending device enables real-time health monitoring within communities with real potential to shift how we manage public spaces and assets. With remarkable accuracy, the device can identify one infected person among 10,000 healthy individuals, boasting a sensitivity of 95% and specificity of 99%. All of this, at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.
I hope you can now get a glimpse as to why we’re so excited about our latest batch of companies. Join us on Thursday to hear directly from these amazing founders.
