Winning the Santander X Launch Award 2022

We’re very, very, VERY excited to say that we’ve just won the Santander X Launch Award 2022!

After a challenging two days of pitching a total of three times to an ever increasing audience and caliber of judges, the Kitt Medical team have managed to walk away with £15,000 in equity free funding!

James and Zak, co-founders of Kitt Medical, were invited on stage to collect their award for winning the Santander X Launch competition 2022.

Let’s start from the beginning:

So first things first, we submitted an initial pitch video to the competition online, which was reviewed by a batch of judges. They then deemed us worthy to be put through to the quarter finals!

What followed was an intense 48 hours as we were invited to the Oval in London to pitch back-to-back along with 100 other inspiring young entrepreneurs each fighting for their startup to win the competition, and along with it - equity free funding!

James and Zak pitching to a panel of judges at the Oval during the semi-finals stage of the Santander X Launch competition.

After a successful quarter finals pitch to a judging panel and small audience in the morning, we were then put through to the semi finals in the afternoon - which was another pitch battle against a new panel of judges and slightly larger audience.

By the end of the day it was announced that we had been selected from the final few to be placed in the live finals along with only five other startups out of the entire cohort of applicants.

The very next morning we arrived at the venue for the finals event - hosted at the impressive and historic One Marylebone - where we got mic’d up, shown the stage, and chatted with the other finalists.

Just like the quarter and semi finals - we were allowed just 3 minutes to pitch, but this time it was on stage in front of an audience of hundreds. The finals were judged by a prestigious panel made up of Josephine Philips, Mandy Nyarko MBE, Katrina Larkin, and Paul Mendieta, who each fired informed, creative and challenging questions at us for 7 minutes after we pitched.

There’s nothing quite like the terror, excitement and sheer adrenaline (if you pardon the pun) that I get from public speaking - I'm so proud of not only the solution we've been able to create and present as a team, but also the light that we were able to shed on the escalating problems associated with allergy in our pitch.

Awards, programmes and challenges like these are hugely beneficial opportunities for early stage startups like ourselves - both on a personal growth and business growth level - and I couldn't recommend applying to them more.

I’m so happy to be able to say that we were allocated first place in the Launch category of the competition, surrounded by other truly great businesses and people.

James and Zak were invited on stage with 2nd & 3rd place winners of the Launch category, as well as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners from the Accelerate category.

We’re super pumped about what’s to come next, and what this increasing momentum will be able to do for our launch of Anaphylaxis Kitts to schools nationwide!

A massive thank you to the judges for listening intently to our pitch, coming back with challenging and informed questions, and overall awarding us 1st place!

And of course huge congratulations to all the other winners, finalists and competitors - the network and community created with the help of Enterprise Nation has been one that I’m sure we’ll all benefit from for years to come.

The full cohort of quarter finalists invited to the Oval for the Santander X competition 2022

To learn more about the Santander X Launch and Accelerate Programmes, click here.