Oxford Space Systems
Marketing
“The Investment Readiness Business Sprint led by the Catapult was fast paced, dynamic and focused. This led to very useful output that helped us position our market offering at high profile industry and equity investor events.”
Impact
- £2.9m raised in venture capital financing and grown from 3 to 17 people.
- A ‘fast & lean’ strategy has seen Oxford Space Systems (OSS) move from company formation to material design, product design, test and launch of the world’s longest microsat boom system in under 30 months.
- A development cycle significantly lower cost and faster than many of their customers can achieve internally.
- €1m co-funding secured from UK Space Agency to further develop large deployable antennas.
- Multiple multi-million contracts being negotiated both in the UK and the US.
- Grand Prix winner and Start Up of the Year, British Engineering Excellence Awards 2015 and other award wins.
How has the Catapult helped?
- Validation and demonstration of Geocento’s capability: Geocento is part of Catapult’s Sentinel Data Access Service (SEDAS).
- Development of new products: Catapult and Geocento worked together to prototype the capability to use social media to support more efficient tasking of satellite imagery.
- Opening new markets: Catapult provided design input and outreach to Geocento as part of a collaborative ESA project to create a earth observation broker platform for the oil and gas industry.
- Export opportunities: Geocento attended the UK/Singapore Technology Showcase, supported by Catapult. Following successful meetings with commercial and government organisations, Geocento signed a reseller agreement. Geocento was part of Catapult’s delegation to SpaceCom 2015 (Houston), which led to a Request for Information (RFI) from a major oil industry players looking to license Geocento’s technology.
- Meeting key players: As part of the Harwell Cluster and a regular attendee of the Catapult’s workshops and networking events, Geocento has met several potential customers and partners.
“Catapult offers a unique innovation environment for our business to succeed. These aren’t empty words: Catapult has hosted numerous deployments of our large deployable antenna, which has helped secure engagement with two EU satellite primes, the UK Space Agency, and positive discussions with a number of large overseas companies.”
– Mike Lawton, Founder/CEO
Click here to download the full Oxford Space System Impact report.
