Over 60 innovative Australian tech scaleups have landed in the UK to join London Tech Week, Europe's largest tech festival running 13-17 of June. Alongside the event the UK Government has created a tailored programme for the Aussie tech companies. They will join events, consultations, and exclusive meetings to fast track their expansion into the UK. This is the first physical programme the UK has run from Australia since 2019.
Now in its ninth year, London Tech Week welcomes 20,000 participants and over 300 speakers. This year the focus of the festival revolves around exploring the next generation of tech innovation, impactful innovation at scale and building a thriving tech industry. As a part of their exclusive programme, Australian delegates will have intimate sessions on raising capital in the UK, setting up in the UK, and tech growth in the UK. They will hear directly from Tech Nation, Oury Clark, Telstra, Mishchon de Raya and many more.
The UK tech ecosystem is an ideal location for international investment with the industry growing at a faster rate than the UK economy. UK tech captured more than a third of the total £89.5 billion investment into Europe in 2021 with £29.4 billion raised by UK startups and scaleups. Though London remains an epicentre for tech growth, the regions are also becoming a hotbed for investment. With more money than ever flowing into UK tech, almost £9 billion of all venture capital invested went into startups and scaleups outside London and the South East. The regions are now home to nine of the 29 unicorns formed in 2021.
The Australian London Tech Week 2022 cohort was selected under one of the following subsectors of tech:
- Future Technology - including artificial intelligence, big data and cyber security.
- Educational Technology
- Digital Health - including medtech and medical devices.
- Financial Technology
This UK Government trade mission is being led in partnership with Australia's State Governments:
- Global Victoria
- Investment NSW
- Trade and Investment Queensland
- Government of South Australia
British Consul General and Deputy Trade Commissioner Asia Pacific (Australia and New Zealand), Louise Cantillon said:
After signing the UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement earlier this year it is fantastic to see such a big and dynamic cohort of Australian tech scaleups join our London Tech Week mission. This is our first physical programme to the UK from Australia since 2019. I am very excited to see what successes come from this week.
The UK tech sector was valued this year at $1trillion (£764 billion). According to new research from Tech Nation, the UK is fourth in the world for tech investment at £32.6 billion, having achieved a record year in 2021. Last year we saw more private capital flow into UK tech than any other European country - £27.4 billion.
This week the UK Government has published a new Digital Strategy. A key focus of this policy demonstrates the UK's commitment to improving the tech ecosystem to ensure that the UK remains one of the best places in the world to start and run a digital technology business. This includes improving access to finance, another step forward in making the UK the best place to list an ambitious technology business.
CEO of Learning Vault, Nicholas Robert said:
As an Australian digital education company that specialises in digital credentialing and certification strategies the UK is a synergistic market for us. The education eco-systems are quite similar across both countries, and as we have been able to make a substantial impact through change management in the Australian education space - it is exciting to take these learnings and adopt similar strategies within the UK to make meaningful impact within the education landscape from a certification viewpoint.
Being able to power life-long-learning by having a digital record of all achievements is something that we, at Learning Vault, believe that all people should have access to - we are excited to be part of London Tech Week to bring this technology to the UK.
CEO & Founder of Cape, Ryan Pritchard said:
Cape is proud to join London Trade Week, at one of the world's leading Fintech hubs. We have strong UK roots, with their founding team having led product & engineering at London based SME digital challengers: Capital On Tap, Cashplus and Funding Circle.
We've been a remote-first team since we were founded during the pandemic and have now transitioned to two hubs (Australia/UK), with 26 full-time employees. Our intention is to become a beacon for talented UK-based engineers, who have experience building similar solutions, and are keen to deploy their learnings to Australia, a country known as early adopters of tech solutions.
Having recently successfully launched, Cape has first-mover advantage in the APAC region as we aim to emulate the success of our European peers in Pleo, Payhawk & Spendesk. Given the current economic backdrop, the timing couldn't be better to discuss opportunities with UK-based VC's to geographically diversify their portfolio as we kick off our Seed fundraise.
About the UK's Department for International Trade:
The UK's Department for International Trade (DIT):
- helps businesses export
- drives inward and outward investment
- negotiates market access and trade deals
- champions free trade
