Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic continues to take its toll on our everyday lives, therefore, it is important we maintain high spirits and support each other and our local communities as much as possible. As non-essential stores remain closed until further notice, there is little we can do to help with this reality. However, for those small local shops and convenience stores that continue to provide us with our essential items and necessities, there are steps put in place to help support their success during this tough time.

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.

The world over, money related bundles have just been reported by countries in an offer to re-establish their economies in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic holding nations over the globe.

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.

Conducting a regular business audit is a vital document that is needed to help monitor and inspect the financial situation of a company. To prevent losing track of assets and overheads a business has, audits help bring clarity to managers where their cash in-flows and out-flows are going to and from.

Authors John Smythe and Ruth Saunders announce the publication of their book ‘Female Entrepreneurs – The Secrets of their Success’, written to inspire and encourage female entrepreneurship. 

Data Tech startups are wanted for Lloyd's Lab Cohort number 5! Lloyd’s are looking for looking for early and late stage companies who can help tap into alternative data sets to paint a more accurate picture of risk and help the market underwrite more profitably. 

AI tech startup Greyparrot has raised £1.825m to tackle the growing waste crisis by introducing digitisation and automation to recycling. The round was led by Speedinvest, a leading early-stage industrial tech investor, with participation from Force Over Mass.

According to UK Government statistics some 660,000 new companies are established each year and many of these will have plans to scale rather than to remain a micro business. Some founders will of course be happy to run their startup as a side hustle, and others will only be looking for a lifestyle business. But for many others that are looking for something larger, ‘how do I scale my business?’ is a question that I am often asked.

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?

UK SMEs are moving to accept card and contactless payments at an increasingly rapid rate as a result of the coronavirus crisis, according to findings published today by NatWest.

Ontruck, Europe's leading digital road freight platform, has secured an investment round of €17 million euros led by OGCI Climate Investments (OGCI CI). Existing Ontruck investors, Cathay Innovation, Atomico, Idinvest Partners and Total Carbon Neutrality Ventures, participated in the round, with Endeavor Catalyst joining as a new investor.

I read once, 'most people are starting from a disadvantage and do just fine'. I find these words encouraging and motivating. The reason being, they don’t know they’re disadvantaged because they simply, just get on with it.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the technological landscape of the future. US-based technology company, is developing a consented and privacy preserving public dataset of human interactions for AI research. This video content will help researchers to advance the possibilities of machine learning within their applications. The contributors to the project are remote workers in the gig economy, also known as the ‘human cloud’. They are being crowdsourced by freelance hiring platform, Twine, through their extensive community of 350,000 freelancers.  

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.

GrowthStep, a one-stop partnership service for startups, has launched in the UK to provide startups in today’s challenging economy with the support they need to focus on carving out market potential and growing their business with often limited resources and budgets. 

Buzz Lightyear might not be the obvious choice of great leaders but we’re taking inspiration from his famous catchphrase in this article to encourage you to think big and define the vision for your organisation or team.

Since the Coronavirus outbreak, multiple concerns about the pandemic deepening social and economic inequalities have been raised. The latest ‘Ecoystem’ webinar session brought together leading investors and one of world’s largest engineering and manufacturing companies in a conversation on challenging industry perceptions to break down barriers to VC funding and innovation.

Mayku are making raw materials and desktop vacuum forming technology accessible for rapid and cost-effective in-house production. Co-Founder and CEO of Mayku, Alex Smilansky, here discusses the commitment to democratising manufacturing, with Under The Roof.