Plug and Play Launches In The UK
Global corporate innovation platform and prolific early-stage investor launches its open innovation platform in the UK with Jaguar Land Rover and BT Group, with more partnerships to follow
LONDON, UK, April 27, 2022,: Plug and Play, the global corporate innovation platform and early-stage investor, has launched in the UK. Through partnerships with leading UK brands – including founding partners Jaguar Land Rover and BT Group – Plug and Play will build and run innovation programmes rooted in collaboration between corporates and startups. Plug and Play also aims to make up to 30 investments per year into UK early-stage startups.
Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, Plug and Play aims to scale innovation through enabling leading corporations to collaborate and partner with the brightest startups. Plug and Play has helped more than 500 organisations from around the world build, run, and scale corporate innovation programmes across more than 40 locations, focused on industries as diverse as fintech, insurtech, IoT, brand and retail, mobility, new materials and packaging, sustainability, food and beverage, travel and hospitality, health, and supply chain. Plug and Play is also one of the world’s most active early-stage investors, backing more than 250 startups every year alongside the world’s best VCs. Notable companies backed at early stage by Plug and Play include PayPal, Dropbox, N26, Lending Club, Hippo, Rappi, Honey, Applyboard, Flutterwave, Turing and many more.
The Plug and Play UK team – led by Kieran Borrett - will partner with leading corporations to support their innovation ambitions and help UK-based startups access the world’s largest network of corporations and investors. Speaking about the launch, Saeed Amidi, CEO and Founder of Plug and Play, said: “As a global hotspot for innovation and home to a strong network of entrepreneurs, the UK has the potential to be one of Plug and Play’s biggest Innovation Platforms. Today corporations need to engage in open innovation to stay relevant, and we support them to do this on a global scale. We invite corporations, governments, and startups to join us in our mission to make innovation open to anyone, anywhere.”
With UK founding partner Jaguar Land Rover, Plug and Play will build a globally recognised open innovation platform with a focus on mobility and cover a wide range of topics from sustainability to digital services. The goal is to bring together leading corporations and other ecosystem players to evaluate and test new technologies and business models pioneered by startups, to enable corporations to solve business challenges and seize new opportunities. The platform will also support Jaguar Land Rover in achieving their ambitious target of net zero by 2039.
The Plug and Play UK programme will begin with a Kick-Off Day on 21 June, with further corporate partners to be announced soon.
François Dossa, Executive Director, Strategy and Sustainability, Jaguar Land Rover, said: “With the launch of the Open Innovation platform, Jaguar Land Rover is looking at the entire mobility and sustainability ecosystem to offer an unparalleled customer experience, shaping the future of our industry and paving the way to the future of mobility. We will explore everything from second-life batteries and the circular economy to new fintech, insurtech, and digital services – all aligned with Jaguar Land Rover as the proud creators of Modern Luxury.”
In collaboration with BT Group as a Founding Partner, Plug and Play will support BT’s Startup partnerships team collaborate with the best startups across a range of ecosystems beyond its core telecoms markets, including enterprise technologies, health, fintech, drones, and products and services that can capitalise on the company’s market-leading 5G network, and accelerate the company’s mission to connect for good.
Meg Blight, Start-up Partnerships Director at BT Group, said: “Plug and Play’s international Innovation Platform gives BT a key route to connect with the best startups worldwide. Our partnerships and investments in this space are already accelerating the digital revolution at BT. We are delighted to grow our relationship further with Plug and Play as they establish themselves in the vibrant UK tech scene.”
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About Plug and Play
Plug and Play is the leading innovation platform, connecting startups, corporations, venture capital firms, universities, and government agencies. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, we're present in 40+ locations across five continents. We offer corporate innovation programs and help our corporate partners in every stage of their innovation journey, from education to execution. We also organize startup acceleration programs and have built an in-house VC to drive innovation across multiple industries where we've invested in hundreds of successful companies including Dropbox, Guardant Health, Honey, Lending Club, N26, PayPal, and Rappi. For more information, visit https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/.
About Jaguar Land Rover
Jaguar Land Rover is reimagining the future of modern luxury by design through its distinct British brands.
Our current model range embraces fully electric, plug-in hybrid and mild-hybrid vehicles, as well as the latest diesel and petrol engines. Our class-leading Jaguars and Land Rovers are in demand around the world and in Fiscal 2020/21 we sold 439,588 vehicles in 127 countries. Land Rover is the global leader of luxury SUVs through its three families of Range Rover, Discovery and Defender. Jaguar is the first ever brand to offer a premium all-electric performance SUV, the Jaguar I-PACE.
At heart we are a British company, with two major design and engineering sites, three vehicle manufacturing facilities, an Engine Manufacturing Centre and a Battery Assembly Centre in the UK. We also have vehicle plants in China, Brazil, India, Austria and Slovakia. Three of our seven technology hubs are in the UK – Manchester, Warwick (NAIC) and London – with additional sites in Shannon, Ireland, Portland, USA, Budapest, Hungary and Shanghai, China.
Central to our Reimagine strategy is the electrification of both the Land Rover and Jaguar brands with two clear, distinct personalities. All Jaguar and Land Rover nameplates will be available in pure electric form by the end of the decade. This marks the start of the company’s journey to become a net zero carbon business across its supply chain, products and operations by 2039.
To help the company meet this objective, Jaguar Land Rover has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions across its operations by 46 per cent, and across its value chains by 54 per cent, by 2030. The goals, which are approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), confirm the company’s pathway to a 1.5°C emissions reduction in line with the Paris Agreement.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Motors since 2008, Jaguar Land Rover has unrivalled access to leading global players in technology and sustainability within the wider Tata Group.
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