Title of talk: Building a cutting-edge, inventive enterprise spun-out from an academic environment
Speaker: Dr. Rakesh Roshan, CEO OXSIGHT Limited
Date: 20 May 2021 | Time: 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/20may-talk | Event Flyer
Abstract: Did you know 80% of our interaction with the wider world happens through eyes. Unfortunately not everyone can see and sight loss is becoming a major public health issue. 90 per cent of the people who are legally blind retain some residual vision.
Oxsight is a spin-out company from the University of Oxford created to commercialize path-breaking AI Vision technology to improve lives of the visually impaired people by boosting their remaining vision. Oxsight’s life-changing technology targets the usable areas of the eye, restoring field of vision with clarity. Today, Oxsight is one of the 4 top companies in the world in this domain area.
Dr Rakesh Roshan, CEO of OXSIGHT will share lessons and insights from his journey towards building a cutting-edge, inventive enterprise spun-out from an academic environment. Dr Roshan will be sharing his real life experiences and learnings whilst building OXSIGHT, including valuation, fundraising, go-to-market strategy and challenges in managing growth while retaining the culture.
About the speaker:
Dr Rakesh Roshan is the Co-Founder and CEO of OXSIGHT Limited, an Oxford University enterprise, and serves on its Board of Directors. OXSIGHT is a Vision AI company established in 2016 as a spinout from Oxford University to disrupt the £100bn vision enhancement market. It has developed a portfolio of products that are transforming lives of partially sighted individuals.
Under Rakesh’s leadership OXSIGHT launched its first-generation product in the UK and European market for people living with peripheral vision loss. OXSIGHT aims to launch its second-generation product in Q2 2021 that has been specially designed for 200m people globally living with central vision loss.
Having formed and raised finance for over 20 Oxford University technology companies, Dr Rakesh Roshan brings commercial experience, technical understanding, and global networks to OXSIGHT. He is the Founding Partner of the UK China Enterprise Fund, established to support high potential UK companies. Rakesh has been appointed as Non-Executive Director of China Tea Culture Limited.
Prior to taking charge at OXSIGHT, Dr Roshan was a key member of the management team at the prestigious Oxford University Innovation. He guided multidisciplinary teams to negotiate investment transactions and lead business development ventures in Asia.
Dr Roshan holds a Physics PhD and qualifications in Entrepreneurial Finance from the University of Oxford. He started his career in the enterprise world with Japanese electronics firm Sharp Corporation. He is named “inventor” on patents and technologies, which have been integrated into commercial products.
About OXSIGHT (https://oxsightglobal.com/)
OXSIGHT technology has been inspired by more than 6 years of research by academics and clinical neuroscientists at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at John Radcliff Eye Hospital, University of Oxford. The core element of OXSIGHT’s revolutionary technology are real-time Computer Vision and deep learning algorithms that mimic some of the basic components of human visual perception. OXSIGHT’s highly efficient wearable AI Machine Vision systems automatically processes live video images and personalises them to users’ needs, abilities and goals. The algorithms rapidly detect the distance to nearby objects and form a map which is then enhanced and displayed on the inside of a pair of smart glasses.
OXSIGHT smart glasses allow people who are visually impaired, with just a minimum of light perception, to recognise and interact with nearby objects. The company has matured the technology through several generations of prototypes and the functionality has been proven through clinical trials.
