Oxford Seed Fund team

Oxford Seed Fund Announces 2020 Investments in Hutano and Docuvision

Published

The Oxford Seed Fund (OSF) is a student-led seed fund and an initiative of Said Business School’s Entrepreneurship Centre.

2020 has brought unprecedented challenges for communities around the world, and the Oxford Seed Fund (OSF) recognises the heightened importance of entrepreneurship in overcoming them.  Each year the fund provides capital to the University of Oxford’s most promising start-ups as well as being an educational opportunity for students in running an early stage fund from sourcing through to the investment decision. Of the hundreds of start-up applications the team reviewed, OSF is excited to announce this year’s start-up investments are Hutano Diagnostics and DocuVision, Inc. 

‘Both companies are doing important work in the global health and AI space respectively,’ comments OSF Managing Director, Tom McQuillen, ‘we are thrilled to support these two start-ups during this pivotal point in their growth journey.’

The OSF team spent time getting to know Atherton Mutombwera, Founder of Hutano, and Rama Veeraragoo, Founder of DocuVision, Inc., in order to better understand  their plans and visions for their companies. 

Hutano Diagnostics is developing novel chemistry that allows small molecules to be used on Lateral Flow Devices to diagnose diseases such as Ebola and COVID-19. ‘Now, more than ever, we see the need for reliable, consistent, self-administered rapid-diagnostic testing,’ added McQuillen, ‘and we think that Hutano’s platform will be critical in detecting, treating and containing threats such as Covid-19 and Ebola. OSF is excited to be on the journey with Hutano and can’t wait to roll-up our sleeves and help out.’

Congratulations to Hutano and DocuVision for reaching key milestones in their start-up journey.

Tom McQuillen

Director, Oxford Seed Fund & 2019 Oxford MBA

Not only does OSF see the global health world urgently looking for innovative interventions, recent months have also seen the business world undergo significant changes. Covid-19 has made digital transformation a priority for most companies. Docuvision, which is designed for law firms and any company seeking to improve its data privacy, uses AI-powered software to make large scale data redaction, discovery, and indexing more manageable and accurate. According to OSF Director Samuel Darko, ‘DocuVision's team expertise and relationships are critical to succeeding in a crowded legal tech space, with customers who are in the throes of digital transformation.’ 

Docuvision’s customers already include some of the world’s leading global law firms and some of the Big 4 consulting/accounting firms. Additionally, the start-up recently became a preferred vendor to a major tech company and is being awarded a contract with the US Federal government.

‘Congratulations to Hutano and DocuVision for reaching key milestones in their start-up journey,’ stated Tom McQuillen. ‘This year’s investment decision was not an easy one for the OSF directors, as there were many applications from other thriving startups like OxRegen Ltd., Crowdless, and Mitra Bio, all of which OSF has confidence in their success.  OSF looks forward to seeing Docuvision and Hutano join the ranks of some of our fastest growing portfolio companies like Onfido, and Go1. Onfido, the AI-based ID verification platform, raised $100M led by TPG Growth earlier this year. Similarly, Go1, an enterprise learning platform, raised a $40M round in May of this year from investors such as Microsoft and Salesforce.’

Find out more about the Entrepreneurship Centre at Saïd Business School.