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Innovate UK + Investor PartnershipAI / retail tech: circular economy
BIRL
£350,000 match investment unlocked Grant funding plus £350K match investment
The challenge
BIRL's one-click resale platform authenticates and values garments instantly using image recognition and machine learning, training convolutional neural networks on real-world fashion imagery is R&D-intensive, and without funding the roadmap faced an 18-24 month delay that would have cost first-mover advantage.
What we did
- Positioned the intelligent pricing and authentication engine as the fundable R&D core, separate from the commercial platform.
- Used the Innovate UK investor partnership route to pair public funding with private capital.
- Evidenced traction through live brand integrations including Lavenham, Frahm and Oxford United.
The result
Innovate UK funding unlocked £350k of match investment from Baltic Ventures, letting BIRL hire technical staff, de-risk delivery and avoid a two-year delay.
Read the full write-upWritten and submitted by the GrantUp team; references available on request.
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