Student entrepreneurs win £10,000 for 'tap to rent' electric trailers
The students from the University of Bristol won the cash for the trailers - and hope to encourage people out of their cars for the weekly shop
Student entrepreneurs at the University of Bristol have won £10,000 to build their business - a 'tap to rent' electric trailer.
It's hoped the idea could help in some way to cut the estimated 4 and a half billion care journeys made to supermarkets every year in England alone.
The system works through a customer tapping their card to unlock the trailer, before bringing it home. When they're done with it, all the customer would need to do it leave it outside for an employee to collect and return it.
They claim trips would cost an average of £4 – that's cheaper than the taxi many people currently need for food shops.
SLANT has won the £10,000 cash from the University’s innovation start-up incubator Runway, which they will use to build two prototypes to refine the design.
Artemis Fragkopoulos, a Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship MSc student, said the number of car trips to UK supermarkets was “mind-boggling”, with 73% of shoppers using cars to get to and from the supermarket, totaling 4.5billion journeys each year.
“In England, 19% of car journeys are made only to go shopping; if we could cut even half of these it would make a huge impact on traffic and the environment, and could mean people don’t need to spend so much of their income on cars,” said Artemis, originally from Cyprus.
In the next few months, SLANT look to partner with a supermarket to trial the trailer, and plan to raise seed funding before trying to secure a patent for their design.
Tarun George Maddila, a Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship MSc student originally from India, said: “We hope this sustainable solution will help the environment and consumers - and supermarkets too, by increasing footfall, decreasing congestion and helping their net-zero commitments.
“I’m really excited by innovation – and when I wanted to study it I couldn’t think of a better place than Bristol. Without this course, and mixing with students and lecturers with all sorts of expertise, we never would have come up with this idea.
“We couldn’t be happier to win this funding, which will help us build the next stage of SLANT.”
SLANT was one of six businesses to win a total of £69,000 in funding at a Runway pitching event this week, with the judges all successful University of Bristol alumni.
Mark Neild, Director of Runway and Senior Innovation Lecturer, said: "I feel proud to work with such a talented group of young innovators who are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in a wide range of endeavours.
“Our expert judges uniformly complimented them on the excellent standard of their pitches. I am grateful to our supporters who are empowering our students to achieve far greater impact than they could on their own.”
The founders of SLANT are Tarun George Maddila, Artemis Fragkopoulos, Nigel Deshpande, Louis Cocking and Sam Bell.