Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram has unveiled plans to hand an extra £3.2m to local businesses and create jobs in the region.
In a bid to support a “thriving ecosystem of innovators” in the region, innovation investment company LYVA Labs will receive the additional funding to help companies to turn ideas into high-growth businesses.
LYVA Labs, formerly LCR Ventures, was initially set up to provide incubator services and funding to early-stage start-up companies in the Liverpool City Region’s health and life sciences sector.
It recently announced its first funding of £175,000 for Frequasense Ltd to develop technology that rapidly detects sepsis.
This second phase funding will help LYVA Labs to expand its remit to “establish up to 20 new deep tech businesses” in the region.
Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, said: “Our region is home to a thriving ecosystem of innovators who have got the talent, ambition and creativity to rival anywhere else in the world. I want to offer them a helping hand with additional funding that can help them to realise their potential – because when local businesses flourish, the rest of our economy does too.
“I want the Liverpool City Region to develop a global reputation as a place that creates more businesses, attracts greater investment, files more patents – and is ultimately more productive and prosperous. The more we can encourage businesses to tap into their entrepreneurial spirit, the faster we can realise our ambition of becoming an innovation powerhouse.”
Lorna Green, CEO of LYVA Labs, added: “We’ve had amazing support from the innovation community for the launch of the Health & Life Sciences Challenge Fund and have already established a strong pipeline for investment. This second phase of funding allows us to work with established businesses across all sectors who want to innovate, and to establish up to twenty new deep tech businesses. The Combined Authority approved an initial £7.5m investment to create LCR Ventures, later rebranded as LYVA Labs, in August 2022, with the intention to allocate a further £3m.”
As part of its drive to boost innovation, the Combined Authority has also published its ‘Innovation Prospectus’, a multi-billion-pound plan to boost the city region’s roadmap towards becoming an innovation powerhouse.
It has also launched the £2.24m High Growth Innovation Fund to help small businesses with innovation, which builds on two pilot rounds of the Future Innovation Fund which saw 35 local companies receive support worth £2.1m.
