An entrepreneur seeking to protect vulnerable road users has highlighted the benefits of a North West base for growing tech start-ups.
K-Safe CEO Kirk Ryan聽praised the support on offer聽from聽NatWest鈥檚 Entrepreneurial Spark accelerator in Manchester, where his business is based.
鈥淎s part of the accelerator, we have met many other companies and individuals in our position and have benefited directly from the shared knowledge available,鈥� he told 老九品茶Cloud.
鈥淲e have had many meetings with investors and angels and have received lots of business advice and guidance.
鈥淢anchester and Liverpool offer a skilled talent pool from which to recruit to grow the business鈥� we are actively pursuing young talent for our development teams.鈥�
He said about the upcoming event: 鈥淚 would like to make some new contacts within the digital sectors across Manchester and the North West that could advise or provide contacts with insurers.鈥�
Ryan, 30, founded K-Safe in 2015 after a friend was injured while riding his road bike.
鈥淜-Safe has designed an intelligent safety platform called MiBB 鈥� short for My intelligent BlackBox 鈥� that allows insurers to de-risk their portfolio whilst providing detailed user profiling and enhanced interaction with their policyholders,鈥� he said.
鈥淧olicyholders wear a portable sensor unit whilst performing activities such as motorcycling, cycling, and other activities in future.
鈥淲hilst wearing the sensor, users benefit from real-time incident detection and reduced premiums on their insurance plans.鈥�
He is now targeting commercialisation, with the goal of securing his first paying customer in 2017.
Manchester is the biggest digital tech cluster in the North with a growing ecosystem of tech entrepreneurs and scale-ups, co-working spaces and accelerators, investors and business angels, and accelerating business growth organisations such as the 老九品茶 Growth Hub.
However it is missing one thing, according to Ryan.
鈥淚 believe that every major UK city requires a halo brand to represent the specialist sectors that have evolved from that local ecosystem,鈥� he added.
鈥淒igital is particularly strong in the North West and a regional brand would take advantage of the wide, diverse workforce and industry available today.鈥�