The latest episode of the Cambridge Tech Podcast features a fascinating panel discussion on international trade recorded live at this year’s Cambridge Wide Open Week.

Steven Lynch, Director of International Trade at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), opens with a sobering statistic: whilst only 10% of British businesses export, the BCC's network achieves a remarkable 45%. This disparity represents a significant untapped opportunity. As Lynch points out, "If we increased UK exports by 2%, we could improve UK GDP by 0.6%."

The problem isn't a lack of innovation or ambition; it's a delivery gap. UK founders and scientists often lack the business expertise and market clarity needed to confidently enter international markets. This is where the new trade accelerator comes in.

Rather than offering generic webinars about exporting, the BCC has created something fundamentally different: an end-to-end, process-driven accelerator specifically targeting life sciences companies interested in Singapore.

Singapore might not be the obvious first choice for UK startups - the US typically dominates - but it's positioned as a strategic gateway to Southeast Asia. With a population of 6 million, Singapore punches well above its weight as a hub for healthcare innovation and life sciences.

Jay Sadanandan, a Singapore life sciences expert, highlights the market's unique advantages:

• The Health Sciences Authority recently launched a close collaboration with the UK's MHRA, enabling regulatory expediency for innovative technologies
• Access to world-class clinical research infrastructure and patient populations
• Singapore's ambitious government vision to solve prevention through treatment across healthcare

The 10 selected companies span pre-seed to Series C stages and focus on areas where UK strength aligns with Singapore opportunity: genomics, molecular diagnostics, advanced therapeutics, and enabling technologies like biologic stabilisation. Importantly, companies aren't required to relocate or abandon UK operations. Instead, they use Singapore as a commercial testbed, a lower-risk environment to validate their business model before scaling across Asia Pacific, the US, or beyond.

What's Next?

The pilot launches in September 2026, but the ambitions extend far beyond Singapore. Lynch reveals plans to scale to Hong Kong, the Gulf, and other strategic markets. The ultimate goal? Moving from 15 businesses entering one market annually to 15 businesses entering different markets each month.

For UK startup founders and investors watching the export opportunity, this episode offers genuine insight into how the next generation of British life sciences companies might achieve global scale, and why Singapore might be the launchpad you haven't considered yet.

Listen to the full episode on the Cambridge Tech Podcast to hear the complete discussion, including audience Q&A and practical advice for companies considering international expansion.

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Produced by Cambridge TV

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Welcome to our new weekly news segment available on both our audio feed and a video version on our YouTube channel.

Regular updates included Tech.uk and Cambridge Wireless, David Roach at Allia, the Internet Watch Foundation, and Unit M, Innovate Cambridge and podcast friend, Simon Thorpe.

Headlines from this week’s news include:

Erin Meryl McGurk and co-founder David Khachaturov, two founders from the University of Cambridge who are being backed by Y Combinator in Silicon Valley to build Egoist Machines.

Cambridge video games company Infinity Fiction are raising cash and broadening their UK team from a local base under the guidance of a brother-founder team of Alex and Alastair Chamorro.

Companies with locations in Cambridge, Milton Keynes and Stevenage are among the beneficiaries of the UK's escalating defence programme, backed by European allies. Cambridge Aerospace, Frankenburg Technologies and Greenjets have been awarded £3 million by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) to develop low‑cost interceptors designed to shoot down drones.

ZeroAvia, a transatlantic leader in hydrogen-electric aviation, and Cambridge-based engineering company Marshall Aerospace are collaborating to develop hydrogen-electric capability for defence platforms.

The Kings Award for Enterprise application window is now open until 8 September, and you can put in for one of four categories - international trade, innovation, sustainable development, or promoting opportunity through social mobility. There is also a fifth category of you’re an 18-25 year old entrepreneur.

Tune in on Tuesday as normal for our next interview – this time recorded during Cambridge Wide Open Week with the British Chambers of Commerce as they shared details of a trade mission to Singapore.

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Cambridge Tech Podcast hits a significant milestone this week with its 200th episode, and they marked the occasion by revisiting Pragmatic Semiconductor, the company that featured in their very first show. This time, co-founder and CTO Richard Price joined hosts Faye Holland and James Parton to discuss how the company has evolved from a scrappy six-person startup in a Cambridge shoebox office to a 300-strong powerhouse reshaping the semiconductor industry.

Richard Price's journey is a masterclass in deep tech entrepreneurship. Starting with a chemistry kit that "ruined a number of carpets" as a child, he progressed through organic light-emitting diode research before co-founding Pragmatic in 2011 with Scott White and four other talented founders.

Richard shared with us details of some of their key innovations:

• Thin-film semiconductor layers on flexible substrates (not silicon-based)
• Manufacturing cycle times measured in days, not months
• Lower temperatures, less water, fewer chemicals = genuine sustainability benefits
• Current applications in RFID smart labels for anti-counterfeiting and EU digital product passport compliance

The roadmap is ambitious. Generation 3 chips launch this year, followed by a CMOS platform at the end of next year, the first complementary metal oxide semiconductor offering from the company. Beyond that lies the "fab as a service" model, potentially deploying manufacturing facilities globally to compress supply chains and boost resilience.

For founders and VCs, Pragmatic's story offers valuable lessons: the importance of finding the right co-founder (Richard and Scott have been together 15 years), the critical role of ecosystem and location, and the patience required to build deep tech companies.

Headline sponsor Holden Polestar

Produced by Cambridge TV

#CamTechPod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.