As renowned author and alternative medicine practitioner, Deepak Chopra once said: “You have to think of your brand as a kind of myth. A myth is a compelling story that is archetypal, if you know the teachings of Carl Jung. It has to have emotional content and all the themes of a great story: mystery, magic, adventure, intrigue, conflicts, contradiction, paradox.”
Israel startup Rise.ai, which offers AI-driven customer re-engagement solutions, is making its gift cards available for purchase on Facebook and Instagram. This new feature will let small and medium businesses and enterprises (SMBs/SMEs) sell digital gift cards to their local community through Facebook and Instagram using the customers’ geo-location.
Purina has announced the first ever winners of the UNLEASHED accelerator lab programme. UNLEASHED is a unique initiative, run by the Purina Accelerator Lab, designed to combine R&D with personalised mentoring and a bespoke nurturing of each business. The winning cohort includes: BlueNalu Innovations, San Diego; BorrowMyDoggy, London; Natu, Barcelona; OneMind Dogs, Helsinki; and Petable, Lisbon.
One of the largest independent financial advisory and tech wealth organisations is to launch a first-of-its-kind on-boarding verification app amid ‘soaring global demand’ for fintech solutions.
Asto Business Capital loans are now available on the Funding Options platform as part of a long term partnership with the business finance marketplace. The Santander-backed app joins Funding Options’ roster of more than 200 lender partners, offering loans of as little as £150 or as much as £150,000, to help small businesses plug urgent cash flow holes.
Britain is facing a projected £74bn drop in revenue for creative industries due to the coronavirus pandemic, with 400,000 jobs of artists, designers, musicians, creators and curators likely to be lost.
For many businesses, scaling up and sustaining growth often seems unachievable, even when the brand has a profitable product or service. Investor and advisor, Sharon Brown, principal of Amplify Equity Inc. has recently adopted a laser focus for helping businesses step-up to the next level by leveraging investor expertise, industry experience, networks, and connections to help them grow faster.
The world is facing a mounting waste crisis and a South West technology startup has developed a new online system to help tackle the problem. The system will also help waste businesses run their businesses safely during the coronavirus pandemic.
The vision for Alexa is to set customers free to do more in life. To achieve this, Amazon is continuing to assist the growing number of startups and entrepreneurs working with voice technology.
The number of people on UK payrolls dropped by 612,000 between March and May, according to early data from the Office for National Statistics and HM Revenue and Customs that is starting to show the depth of the hit to the economy from the pandemic. The UK unemployment rate for the three months to April 2020 was estimated at 3.9%, 0.1 percentage points higher than a year earlier but largely unchanged on the previous quarter.
Lone Design Club is leading the charge for independent designers in the evolution of the high street, as well as the reaction to the challenges now facing small businesses brought about by COVID-19, by going ‘phygital’.
Personalised health management platform, Span, has announced the launch of its new subscription-based business offering to help employees prevent and reduce symptoms of lifestyle-induced conditions – Diabetes, Hypertension, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, Obesity and IBS. The platform offers personalised, continuous nutrition and mental wellbeing plans and on-demand consultations with clinicians.
Over the last few weeks, Chancellor Rishi Sunak spelled out how he and the Treasury plan to end the Job Retention Scheme – also known as furlough – at the end of October. The scheme is currently paying 80% of the wages of at least 8.4 million workers placed on furlough by their employers. Many are concerned that the majority of these workers will be made redundant as soon as the scheme ends, leading to mass unemployment.
The Tech to Connect Challenge was launched in the summer of 2019, in order to develop early-stage ideas for technology that enable more or better interactions between people. The challenge looked for the most innovative ideas, helping them turn these ideas into prototypes that have the potential for real change.
The Bank of England has revealed that it may take the cost of borrowing below zero for the first time in its over 300-year history; following moves by Eurozone countries to introduce negative interest rates. The move could effectively mean that savers pay to have their money with banks and are incentivised to borrow money and increase their spending.
Figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) recently published have showed that the number of people claiming unemployment benefit went up from 856,000 to 2.1 million in April, with almost 1.5 million officially unemployed.
Technology charity, Jangala, has deployed a new product ‘Get Box’ to bring WiFi access to vulnerable individuals in the UK during the COVID-19 lockdown.
As we live through the most connected time in history, its clear to see that data plays a huge role in many businesses. It’s what keeps businesses running smoothly, so naturally it needs to be of the highest quality. But what are the most reliable sources? Customer feedback is at the top of most businesses lists. Customers certainly won’t hesitate to tell you what they like or dislike about your product or service. But how can we use all this information? Can conversations with call centres or an online chatbot harvest all the value from these conversations?
OurCrowd, the large venture investment platform, will host the OurCrowd Pandemic Innovation Conference on 22nd June to explore the latest technological solutions to the coronavirus crisis, including vaccination, treatment, diagnostics and prevention of the disease.
The team at Quotezone.co.uk, an insurance comparison site, surveyed 600 UK businesses about how they are dealing with the lockdown. The research revealed that two fifths of UK businesses (39%) have had to pivot their offerings since the beginning of lockdown, with 76% of these providing a brand-new service.
