Slaughter and May announces latest Fast Forward Climate Tech cohort

Slaughter and May today announces the latest cohort of its technology entrepreneurs programme, Fast Forward. Following the success of 2022’s climate tech special edition, the sixth cohort will again partner with Undaunted ‒ an initiative of the Royal Institution and the Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London, aimed at tackling climate change through innovation.

Fast Forward first launched in 2016 and throughout five cohorts has provided almost £1,000,000 in support to a range of early-to–mid stage technology ventures. Alumni include telematics car insurance provider, By Miles and open banking unicorn TrueLayer.

Each business in the programme benefits from support to the value of 100 hours of legal advice from Slaughter and May and other value-add services, including access to the firm’s extensive networks and tailored coaching in areas such as pitching, negotiations, and managing people.

Slaughter and May partner Oly Moir says, “We are excited to again be working with Undaunted, to partner with some ground-breaking businesses working to tackle climate change. Sustainability is a key area of focus for us as a firm and for our clients, and we’re delighted to have the opportunity to help businesses who share this passion grow and develop.”

Partner Samay Shah adds, “Working with Undaunted was a natural step for us in 2022, and the climate focus of Fast Forward was such a success that re-visiting the model for this year made complete sense. There are so many fantastic businesses in this space that choosing just five was difficult, but the quality and passion of each of these businesses is outstanding, and we can’t wait to get to work alongside them.”

The five businesses in this cohort are:

• Deploy Tech are making the implementation of water storage as convenient as never before. In the agricultural sector including livestock farming, arable farming, garden centres and others, the better use and adequate management of water resources are key to address the climate change challenges that the UK and the rest of the world are facing. Deploy’s aim is to put an end to these challenges using their innovative technology in water storage tanks.
• DyeRecycle’s technology addresses chemical circularity in the fashion and textile industry and aims to solve two of the greatest challenges facing the industry: dye pollution and textile waste. They are turning to sustainable green chemistry to close the loop for dyes in the textile industry while also enabling fibre circularity. They are extending the service life of dyestuff to colour a new garment by using textile waste as an untapped feedstock for dyes and colours.
• Olsights is seeking to accelerate the energy transition by expediting decision-making and access to project insights. They have created a global web app - ‘The Olsights Eye’ - that uses intuitive visualisations to simplify understanding of the rapidly-changing energy transition landscape. Their digital engineering approach accelerates early-stage project screening, mapping global supply & demand, and accessing unbiased integrated insights for renewables, hydrogen, CCUS, power and national policies.
• Kooling Technologies is a Big Data SaaS platform that powers the sustainability ambitions of businesses, institutions and cities, focusing on the single largest source of emissions - mobility & transport. The Kooling platform brings unprecedented automation on measurement, regulatory reporting capabilities and people education & engagement at large scale. To do so Kooling leverages a proprietary, patent-pending sensor data analysis technology and gamification.
• Mana Biosystems farms the Black Soldier fly on organic waste sources as a sustainable source of protein for animal feed. Mana’s vision is to feed the growing population, sustainably. The mission is to enable insect farming for anyone, anywhere in the world, by developing containerised vertical insect farms.

Naveed Chaudhry, Co-Founder and Head of The Greenhouse at Undaunted, said, “These organisations all have the potential to make a huge difference, and I am so pleased that they have this opportunity to work with the Slaughter and May team. We saw first-hand how participation in the Fast Forward programme helps accelerate growth, and I am excited to see what they can achieve together.”

About Undaunted and The Greenhouse

Undaunted is a home for creative, proactive people exploring how innovation can help humans to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis in sustainable, equitable and scalable ways. Our community spans academic science, industry, and business, and also broader critical contexts, such as policy and societal engagement, and is focused on implementing clean technology, transforming the global economy and tackling climate change.

Undaunted’s climate accelerator, The Greenhouse, supports the growth of young, sustainable businesses looking to tackle climate change via its unique 12-month programme. Meet our recent cohorts.

In the face of climate change, we are Undaunted