Company: News
OLAI Completes Bruntwood Programme and Pitches for Investment at Lifted Ventures’ End of Programme Showcase
OLAI has completed Bruntwood’s Female Founders Programme and pitched for investment at Lifted Ventures’ end-of-programme showcase.
Every founder remembers the room where it started. For OLAI, that room was Bruntwood’s Female Founders Programme, delivered in partnership with Lifted Ventures. This month, that chapter came to a close, marked by OLAI pitching for investment at the programme’s end-of-programme showcase.
Where it began
OLAI joined the incubator with a problem, not a product. Founder Yasmin Sidat had spent years watching people around her—older adults, disabled adults, and people managing conditions such as dementia and autism—get quietly excluded from a world that had gone digital without them.
Booking a GP appointment. Transferring money between accounts. Renewing a licence online. Small tasks, until they’re not.
The incubator gave OLAI the structure to turn that observation into something real: time to talk to the people affected, space to test ideas, and a network of founders and mentors who had been through the same climb.
What came out of it
By the time the programme ended, a problem had become a validated product:
- A market-ready product for public- and private-sector organisations.
- An app-store-ready experience.
- Research and testing of digital guidance flows that support independent use.
- Early partnerships with public-sector organisations, bringing OLAI to the people who need it most.
None of that happens in isolation. It happens because an incubator built a room where the right conversations could take place at the right time.
Why it matters now
OLAI has moved fast since: recognition in Tech Nation’s Breakout 50, a NextWave 2026 finalist place, and backing from GMCA’s Business Growth Hub. But all of it traces back to the same starting point: a female founders programme that took a bet on a problem much of the tech industry had overlooked.
Pitching at Lifted Ventures’ end-of-programme showcase was a chance to put that story directly in front of investors, as OLAI continues to build its network of backers and partners.
We’re grateful to Bruntwood, Lifted Ventures, and everyone in that cohort. We’re just getting started.