Global Impact: LBS Incubator 2025 ventures in health, AI, housing & education

At London Business School, entrepreneurship is not just about building businesses; it is about tackling real-world challenges, driving meaningful impact, and reshaping entire industries.

As part of the London Business School £2m Entrepreneurship Experience, the 2025 LBS Incubator welcomes a new cohort of founders whose ventures span sustainability, healthcare, education, and beyond.

What unites them is not only their ambition to innovate, but their commitment to serving communities and customers with purpose. Many have already secured letters of intent or are piloting their solutions, evidence of both need and momentum.

“This year’s cohort embodies the spirit of London Business School: innovative, bold, and deeply committed to impact. They’re not just chasing opportunity; they’re building solutions with purpose. And when I say building, I mean really building. Some already have paying customers, signed LOIs, or advanced pilots. We thought we would get lots of startups, which would be nothing but AI wrappers. However, we were pleasantly surprised to find that these startups were focused on their customers and the problem, and building something people want,” says Osman Haneef, Senior Manager of Ventures at the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital (IEPC) at LBS.

Three of the ventures are tackling sustainability head-on.

The inefficiencies involved in battery manufacturing costs USD 20 Billion annually. Chris Xu (MBA 2025) and Arthur Fordham are the founders of Accoubatt, a SaaS solution that uses acoustic technology and machine learning to “listen” to batteries, making manufacturing more efficient and sustainable. They are running a pilot with a major battery company and recently won the INNOVA Europe competition.

New stringent packaging regulations (EU PPWR, UK EPR, Plastic Packaging Tax), increasing consumer awareness, and investor scrutiny, are mounting pressure on consumer companies to use more sustainable packaging. Mehak Agarwal (MBA 2022) and Savinien Gauchet are building Celterra, a deep-tech biomaterials startup developing circular, carbon-negative packaging to replace deforestation-driven paper products.

Only 15 per cent of Africa’s 170 million metric tons of annual agricultural residue is recycled. This issue inspired Kwame Bekoe (EMBAG 2023) and Plabon Rahman (EMBAG 2023) to create AfriSAF, a project enabler that upcycles agricultural residue into value-added products and supports clean energy initiatives across Africa through a digital platform that ensures sustainable supply chains. They already have a proof-of-concept pilot up and running in Ghana, and several promising partnerships in the pipeline.

The social impact of this year’s cohort extends beyond sustainability.

The proportion of the NHS’s budget on Acute Services has increased from 49 per cent in 2002 to 58 pr cent in 2024. The best solution is earlier intervention, but the NHS does not have the resources to allow it to do so. Abhishek Kumar (MBA2025) is leading Evida, a clinician- and data-led healthcare provider focused on prevention and early intervention.

In a world where AI is disrupting the workforce and UK Corporates are hiring 40 per cent less early-year career employees, it is more essential than ever that students learn higher-order skills, such as critical thinking and leadership, as early as possible. To address this need, Vedika Harribarran (SLN2025) and Ivan Ante (SLN2025) are reimagining education with Flosendo, a collaborative enrichment platform blending behavioural science, play, and business smarts to prepare K–12 students for the AI era. They are launching pilots with leading private and state schools in the UK.

For the rest of the founders, what sets them apart is their ability to connect with specific customers and communities who have already demonstrated interest in their solutions.

Tenant referencing is broken. Evicting a bad tenant can easily cost £32,000 in central London, and it is going to get much worse with the new Renters Rights Bill 2025. Yet landlords, despite 21 applicants for every rental home in the UK, are still picking the wrong tenant. Why? Credit checks give an incomplete picture. Joe Ritblat (MIFPT 2025) and Emanuele Briglia (MBA 2025) are building Laddr, a tenant-referencing platform that combines financial checks with behavioural insights to help landlords and agents rent to people they trust; they already have 1000 homes confirmed for paid trials.

In 2024, over 160,000 recall events took place. During each event, thousands, if not millions, of products were recalled, costing companies billions of dollars. Gianmarco Brunetti (EMBAL J2018), Marco Marelli, and Marco Fortunato have launched Rcalls, a quality management system that reduces product recall risks for SMEs and helps them cut costs on liability insurance through AI-enabled monitoring.

In August 2025, an MIT report noted that 95 per cent of GenAI pilots in the last year failed to deliver any measurable impact. There is a large trust deficit because with most models, over 30 per cent of AI output suffers from Hallucinations. To address this challenge, Joseph Tsaparas (MiM 2012) and Philip Saks launched Ragstore, a B2B SaaS platform designed to help small businesses practically adopt generative AI, and they have already launched pilots with several law firms.

Currently, property management involves painful and inefficient processes. Charles Cammiade (IEP 2014) is leading Cleartrade with his co-founder Yuriy Zhayvoronok; the company applies large language models to automate property maintenance triage and pricing in vendor marketplaces, and they have launched a promising pilot.

As AI makes it easier to build software, the decisive edge will be distribution. With 25 per cent of consumers switching from traditional to creator led brands, there is a growing need for companies that can help creators leverage their brands. To help them, Affinity Labs AI, founded by Edo Ricci, Ahmed Eltom (MBA 2023), and Sunny Panchal, launches creator-led software brands by leveraging AI alongside niche communities and trusted distribution; they have already signed major talent agencies and are partnering with leading creators.

With countless productivity tools to help founders sell to customers, Andre Nazareth (EMBALS 2022) has launched SocialSeller.ai, an AI-powered prospecting platform that helps content creators and SMEs generate high-quality leads and close sales through personalised conversations on Instagram; within a month of launching and building the product as a solo-founder, Andre was already revenue-generating.

Manufacturers spend weeks and extensive resources to license IP for commercial use, with it often taking many months to close a licensing deal. Victor Bondarenko (EMBA 2019) and Andrew Bondarenko are developing iLicensing.io, a patented SaaS platform designed to streamline the intellectual property licensing process, removing friction for innovators and businesses alike, making it possible to license IP in as little as 15 minutes.

From batteries to biomaterials, from healthcare prevention to creator economies, the 2025 LBS Incubator cohort is already proving its relevance. With signed letters of intent, early pilots, and real customer traction, these ventures demonstrate that innovation and purpose can go hand in hand. As the Incubator supports this new wave of founders, it is clear that their work will not only transform industries but also create meaningful, lasting impact in communities around the world.