After helping 84 companies to raise £23.3 million in funding and create more than 200 new jobs, location and property data initiative Geovation is welcoming the first Scottish cohort to its accelerator programme.

Started by the United Kingdom’s national mapping agency Ordnance Survey, Geovation has spent the past decade fostering open innovation and collaboration with support from HM Land Registry and now Registers of Scotland. The process to choose the first wave of Scottish start-ups that would receive focused support and access to quality location and property data and resources began a couple of months ago.

The companies that made the cut include Folarity, a software as a service (SaaS) platform dedicated to helping forest managers plan and monitor woodlands; Walks and Waterfalls, a treasure hunt-style app aimed to help users locate Scotland’s waterfalls, undiscovered walks, and heritage sites; and AboveBoard, a community-driven platform built to equip users with self-management tools which would help to reduce property maintenance costs.

Expressing his excitement to work more closely with Scottish start-ups, Alex Wrottesley, Head of Geovation, says, “The diversity and quality of the applications to the Geovation Scotland Accelerator Programme were very strong and this bodes well for the future. It has been an incredible 10 years that have seen this Ordnance Survey initiative grow and establish itself within the start-up and entrepreneurial community. It’s been a real team effort and we’re now looking forward to the next ten years and helping even more start-up launch and prosper.”

Jennifer Henderson, Keeper of the Registers of Scotland, adds, “Geovation Scotland Accelerator Programme It represents our ongoing commitment to finding new uses for RoS data that can benefit the people of Scotland and the Scottish economy.”

Geovation’s Clerkenwell-based Accelerator Programme has also welcomed seven new start-ups this month. These include Hammer-Flights, which provides an adaptive flight automation platform for drone service providers, and proptech firm Lairvue, which assures a comprehensive week-long property viewing service to ensure viewings do not get canceled, postponed, or missed.

“Ten years into Geovation, and we’re still seeing ever more novel and exciting ideas with each new intake,” Andrew Trigg, Chief Geospatial and Data Officer at HM Land Registry, sums up.