New Zealand Tech Companies Will Take to UK Stage

14 New Zealand-based tech scale-ups have been selected from a competitive pool by the UK government to join London Tech Week this year, the BBC reports. This week will run from 13-17 June and is Europe’s largest tech festival. The festival will give the selected Kiwi companies an opportunity to showcase their platform and the potentially transformative chance to expedite their UK expansion.

The Possibilities of Opportunity

Now in its ninth year, London Tech Week has grown to an impressive scale in the thriving tech hub of London. The event will bring together over 20,000 participants – from senior investors to inspirational start-up founders to tech rising stars – in an epic celebration of the technology industry.

Together, the participants of the event will discuss the power of technology for societies. The week-long festival will focus on three core topics: exploring the next-gen of tech innovation, building a thriving tech industry and impactful innovation at scale. 

The chosen 14 companies from New Zealand will join the event in a tailored programme created specifically for them by the UK government. During the week, the scale-ups will be able to join consultations, events and exclusive meetings in order to accelerate their UK expansion. 

As part of their exclusive programme, New Zealand delegates will have intimate sessions on raising capital in the UK to fast-track their expansion into the nation’s market. The UK is a leading hub of tech innovation and thus its ecosystem of the industry is an ideal investment location for international companies. 

Currently, the tech industry is growing at a faster rate than the UK economy as money continues to gush into the sector. More than a third of total investment into Europe in 2021 was endowed into UK tech. Yet this is not just being pumped into London – the county’s leading hotbed for investment – and £9 billion of all venture capital has also gone into startups outside of the capital and the rest of the South East.

Louise Cantillion, British Consul General and Deputy Trade Commissioner Asia Pacific, stated, “The UK tech sector was valued this year at $1 trillion (£764 billion), the UK is fourth in the world for tech investment at £32.6 billion,”

“Last year we saw more private capital flow into UK tech than any other European country – £27.4 billion.”

The New Zealand Players

The New Zealand London Tech Week 2022 cohort was selected under several tech subsectors: future tech, educational tech, digital health and financial tech.

The Kiwi company Cemplicity is one of the selected participants. Founded in 2013, Cemplicity is a digital health company that works towards a patient centric health system that is both self-sustaining and inclusive. 

The platform has managed to cultivate a global presence across New Zealand and Australia, as well as in Canada and Europe. Cemplicity already has a headquarter in London, but its selection for this year’s London Tech Week will continue in aiding the company in fast-tracking its presence in the UK tech market. 

CEO of Cemplicity Blaik Wilson said, “We are ready to scale and London Tech Week, in particular, is a great chance to meet with other Australian and New Zealand companies, to learn from their experiences and to access experts in the UK within healthcare and investor networks.”

Another selected company is CarbonClick. “CarbonClick is an enviro-tech company whose global mission is to enable a more ‘climate friendly’ approach to how businesses operate and individuals live, work and travel.”

“London Tech Week offers an “important and potentially transformative” platform.”