In partnership with Tecno International, UCL School of Management recently hosted the UCL SoM SustainTech Pitching Competition. Our finalists pitched their ground-breaking startup ideas to a panel of experts and competed for one of three prizes: Best Pitch, Best Idea, and Audience Choice Award. 

We would like to congratulate Solora Limited for being awarded the Best Pitch Award, who have designed a mobile application that is designed to help visually impaired users access real-time public transportation information across the United Kingdom. We caught up with Alyssa, the COO of Solora Limited to find out more and how it felt to win the Best Pitch Award.

Can you tell us about your company and rideontime?

At Solora Limited, we’re building inclusive technology to empower people of all abilities. In the UK alone, over 2 million people live with sight loss, and 1 in 3 visually impaired individuals rarely or never use public transport. This presents a significant challenge not only for inclusivity, but also for sustainability.

To address this, we developed a solution, called ‘RideOnTime’, which converts unreadable LED signboards into clear image, text, and audio formats, ensuring the UK transportation systems remain accessible, easy to use and intuitive for partially visually impaired individuald.  

HOW DID YOU FIND THE SUSTAINTECH Pitching COMPETITION?

The SustainTech Pitching Competition was a valuable learning experience. The pitching workshops and one-on-one support were extremely helpful for refining our message, and we are grateful for the opportunity we had to present our product alongside such accomplished teams.

We are incredibly grateful to have been part of this event and honoured to receive this recognition and award, and would like to thank the organisers of this event, and everyone who supported us along the way. This recognition fuels our mission to make public transport more accessible and help us give back to society. Lastly, we would to give a huge shoutout to the team: