Meet the winners of the first DWEN UK Dream Tech Contest

On 17 November 2021, the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) announced the winners of its first DWEN UK Dream Tech Contest.

Competing for a combined £40,000 worth of new tech solutions, the three lucky DWEN members to take the prizes were:

• 1st place (winning £25,000 in tech): Beevive

• 2nd place (winning £10,000 in tech): Metalynx

• 3rd place (winning £5,000 in tech): Slip

You can read more about the winning businesses below.

The DWEN UK Dream Tech Contest was launched to celebrate female-led businesses that are doing incredible things across the UK. Applicants were invited to share their stories about what makes their businesses unique and how new technology would help them.

Enterprise Nation supported DWEN in encouraging female founders to enter the competition for the chance to take their business to the next level.

The contest winners

First place – Beevive

Faye Whitley, co-founder

“We’re the inventors of the world’s first Bee Revival Kit, the Beevive Keyring. It was inspired by a spontaneous encounter with a tired bee.

“Knowing how important bees are, and how dangerously they are in decline, we wanted to do something to help. This is when we began designing a keyring to be readily available for the next time you meet a bee in need.

“The product itself is unique but it’s also the community behind it that’s really extraordinary. We call them our ‘VIBs’ and thanks to them our kits have travelled all around the world, saving bees and raising awareness for pollinators.

“I love how many people gift their kits to others, with wonderful messages about the planet and feel empowered when they carry it on their keys.

“We’ve just moved into our first commercial studio space and are growing fast. New technology will help us to continue developing and evolving and welcome new team members. It’ll also give us the support to make sure we’re secure and giving our existing staff the flexibility to work remotely.”

Second place – Metalynx

Kanwal Bhatia, co-founder and chief scientific officer

“We’re an early-stage start-up providing a software platform for data owners to create their own visual AI applications. In particular, we create tools that allow domain experts to curate their own image datasets used to train deep learning models. By empowering industry domain experts who have limited technical training to build their own solutions, we aim to increase the benefits of visual AI across industries.

“The world relies on visual decision-making. However, much of the impact that visual AI can have is unclaimed. From the early detection of cancer, to precision agriculture and wildlife conservation, the need for both deep AI knowledge and data domain expertise creates a barrier to adoption.

“Machine learning forms a core component of our business but requires powerful and expensive hardware. Due to the iterative nature of development, we prefer to use workstations over cloud solutions. The contest helps us with the hardware we need as we grow our team and business.”

Third place – Slip

Tash Grossman, founder

“We’ve created a consumer-facing mobile app, Slip. When a user downloads it, they’re assigned a unique QR code that they can embed in their mobile wallet. Then when shopping, at the point where a receipt would typically be printed or emailed, the sales assistant can scan the QR code and instantly the receipt goes to the customer’s Slip app.

“Our app is retailer-agnostic, can store receipts for as long or as little time as a customer wants, and provides personalised and exclusive ads and rewards based on buying habits.

“Slip’s core mission is to reduce the impact on the environment – paper receipts can’t be recycled –while driving footfall to the UK high street. Post-pandemic, it’s important that people shop in-store, and that retailers understand who their customers are. Slip helps them do this.

“The servers we build must be incredibly robust, fully secure and protected as they’ll be managing large quantities of personal data. We want to be a leading technology company and expand fast, and winning this contest provides us not only with the technology, but also the exposure and connections to industry experts who can advise us.”

What is the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN)?

DWEN is for women entrepreneurs who believe that technology is the backbone of their success. In this day and age, every business is a tech business and Dell is a valuable tech partner for women entrepreneurs.

Joining DWEN gives you access to women entrepreneurs around the world and valuable resources to grow your business – including the latest technology, access to funding resources, and best practices from a global network of members.

To find out more about DWEN and how to join, visit the DWEN website.