The Client

Centrica is a British multinational energy and services company. Its principal activity is the supply of electricity and gas to consumers in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The Objective

Centrica is interested in collaborating with the startup community to drive innovation. Therefore, they launched “The Active Ageing Challenge” to identify startups developing technologies to help meet the needs of an aging society.

The Solution

Leveraging our expertise, our team sourced startups from around the globe solving this challenge, managed the application process, and vetted the 125 startups that applied from 20 different countries. With our guidance, Centrica selected the top 10 most promising startups to pitch to a panel of industry experts for a prize fund of £100,000.

The Outcome

The panel selected three companies:

• MINUT - developer of a complete home alarm in a single device

• EchoCare - developer of a non-wearable, self-learning personal emergency response system

• Pillo Health - an intelligent care assistant for the home

Following the startup challenge, Centrica invested $300K in EchoCare to help develop their emergency response system.