COVID-19 has radically transformed the university experience with the shift to remote classes. Many college students have decided to postpone their undergraduate studies; many of them will never enroll. Others are on contemplating whether to drop out or not. This not only presents a challenge for the colleges but also for society in general as those with just a high school diploma are expected to learn ~£1M less on average than those with their bachelors over the course of their lifetimes. Purlos is a personalized engagement platform built on Salesforce that helps academic institutions retain students by engaging and communicating with them in the channels that students are already actively using. The platform works to address the concerns of potential students during the admissions and enrollment process. The company’s digital assistant, Jenni, provides support through its AI-powered chat and for issues that cannot be addressed, the platform will escalate issues directly to administration. For the institutions, they are provided with a robust data analytics console that identifies the students that are most likely at-risk to drop out. London TechWatch caught up with CEO David Bartlett to learn more about the challenges facing higher educational institutions, the company’s traction, future plans, and much, much more.
Tech
Are Robo-Butlers Really Handy?
“I am extremely skeptical about the quality of the artificial intelligence behind the housekeeping robot in Samsung’s CES video. They show it performing an extremely wide variety of tasks, from pouring wine to loading the dishwasher to doing laundry. Developing an AI robust enough to go into an unknown consumer home and learn from them how they want to pick up toys is already a hard problem.”
What is Clubhouse App, and Why Does it Matter?
Let’s talk about Clubhouse app. The app is the beginning of a wildly underrated, emerging, social media platform. Why is it underrated? Because most people don’t know about it yet. While many of you might already know about Clubhouse, in the scheme of 300 million-plus Americans and 7.5 billion people on earth, very few do. The […]
Deary Gives You a Daily Dose of Nostalgia by Turning Your Messages into Memories
Deary is the first app that uses AI to discover emotional sentiment in your chat-messages and transform them into a story. Deary brings people closer together by unlocking the human value in chat-messages and presents users with ‘Message Cards’ that contain a day’s worth of messages. London TechWatch chatted with Cofounder and CEO Federico Allegro to understand how navigating his long-distance relationship inspired the creation of Deary, the company’s experience building in London, and future plans.
Guardara Pulls in £120K to Make Fuzzing Accessible for Software Development Teams
Fuzzing, or fuzz testing, is a quality assurance technique used to identify coding errors and hackable software bugs in enterprise software, networks, or systems. Guardara has built a general-purpose fuzzer, FuzzLabs, to help enterprise security teams easily find code defects and vulnerabilities earlier on in the development process. London TechWatch caught up with Mitali Rakhit to learn more about Guardara, the inspiration for the business, fundraising virtually, and the company’s recent funding from Techstars.
Avion Raises £300K for its User Story Mapping Tool to Help Agile Software Teams Build Better Products
When it comes to building digital products, user story mapping is a critical component of the development process that can either push a project forward or set it back for months. Avion is the user story mapping tool that helps agile software teams build digital products smarter and faster. Avion’s interface enables software teams to collaboratively visualise the entire product map and user journeys on a user story map in order to effectively plan future releases, uncover gaps, and prioritise the most important tasks. London TechWatch caught u with Cofounder James Sear to learn more about Avion, how it’s making the software development process more agile, and the company’s first funding round from Haatch.
The Next Stage in the Financial Revolution: AR and VR Solutions
The next step in the financial evolution has welcomed the applications of immersive Augmented and virtual realities. AR and VR can transform traditional banking and financial services into staggering, visual experiences by developing a personalized, face-to-face virtual environment.
Anything World Raises £500K To Let You Build 3D Worlds Using Your Voice
Don’t underestimate the power of your voice. One of the latest London startups to come out of Techstars and Ubisoft’s AI accelerator is Anything World, the no-code platform that allows creators to build 3D worlds simply using their voice. Anything World has a pre-built library of 500K+ 3D models for creatives to choose from, and its proprietary machine-learning algorithm can bring any static model to life through simple voice commands. Anything World integrates with Unity, Google Poly, and other platforms. The company is currently focused on scaling its integrations and recently launched a public Beta. London TechWatch caught up with CTO and Cofounder Gordon Midwood to learn more about the company, its plans to make integrated 3D experiences ubiquitous, and the company’s recent funding round.
Bodyswaps Raises £470K for its VR Platform That Develops Soft Skills in the Workplace
Soft skills don’t come naturally to everyone, so companies like Bodyswaps are using AI, VR, and behavioral science to develop immersive modules for soft skills training. Through unscripted intervention that places users in realistic workplace situations, Bodyswaps’ platform helps to improve soft skills such as emotional intelligence, empathy, and leadership to complement workforce training programs. LondonTechWatch caught up with Cofounder and COO Julien Denoel to learn more about the unique benefits of using VR for workforce training, the company’s experience raising in the middle of the pandemic, and recent funding round, which brings the company’s total funding raised to £795K.
Gravity Sketch Raises £3M For its Native 3D Design Platform
We live in a 3D world but most of the products that we use were designed using a 2D methodology, which led to an increase in product development time as engineers and product designers went back and forth. Thanks to Gravity Sketch, the product design and collaboration platform that allows engineers and product designers to work in 3D, the process is becoming more streamlined, changing a paradigm that has persisted for decades. By designing in 3D from the onset, the need to sketch and then transfer into clunky CAD software is eliminated. The platform is already being used by over 50,000 design professionals. London TechWatch caught up with Cofounder and CEO Oluwaseyi Sosanya to learn more about how an academic project inspired the launch of the business, future plans, recent funding from investors that include Kindred Capital, Point Nine Capital and Forward Partners, and much, much more…