Welcome to the twenty-third edition of our newsletter, as we win two pitch competitions in a week and start work on our mobile app. This newsletter is aimed at investors, collaborators, future hires and early adopters of our products.

It may not be top of the international news but air pollution in northern Pakistan and India has reached shocking levels - multiples of what is considered hazardous to health. We have been trying to raise awareness and welcome all action to address the problem. Affecting billions of people, authorities have closed schools and advised people to stay at home. While we have some AirTrack users in South Asia, our coverage there is not yet significant; but we stand ready to help wherever possible. Please join us on our mission - Personalising Air Quality, for everyone.

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Hot off the press

• we have had a busy two weeks of pitching, from the Businettes UK launch event, through winning the Imperial heat of the VCIC (Venture Capital Investment Competition) where we were named 'most VC-backable start up' and culminating in winning a £10k grant at the GoodTech Ventures end of cohort showcase. We are still pinching ourselves
• we continue to work on our B2B strategy including planning for website upgrades and entering new fee negotiations with a strategic partner. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the World Economic Forum Clean Air Alliance next week, as the major corporate network tackling air pollution
• we have started work in earnest on our mobile app development - a hugely exciting step! And we have now joined the Scale tier of Google for Start Ups and look forward to the tailored support that will give us.

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Go with us towards clean air

• for anyone of a certain generation, you will recognise the resonance of our feature in the Surbiton-based 'Good Life' magazine this week. We do love any opportunity to get the word out about clean air
• please also help us spread the word about the insights we already have from our AirTrack product. We include the unexpected observation that the worst sport for air pollution exposure amongst our users is football. Read more here
• we continue to be amazed by all the support we get from far and wide. Big shout outs to Luca Iovino Jim Newton Nick Tate Mariana Carranza Christian Dorffer David Hinton Emma Williams Christian Dorffer Tobias Lindvall Georg Molzer Yasin Gulam Daniel Wardle Kitty Harris Fred Joye Aarsh Batra Sam Kinsey-Briggs MBE MA Sam Simpson Véronique Rapetti - Certified Growth Mindset Practitioner Kris Jones (He/Him) Jasmin Thomas Andrew Engeli Juproop S L Navin Sewak Katherine Marcham Tamsin Ellis Vaida Ska-McNeill Victoria Arnhold Claire Siegert Denisa Ismalaj Fenella Chambers Catherine Ann Reid Erin Spurling Shaun Brace Alina Klarner Naomi Hulston Dr. Maria A. Nelson Rene Perkins Sofia Nibali Umesh Kumar Anne Pordes Bowers Zaheer Nabi Sindhuja Jeyabal. We hope you'll all continue with us towards clean air.

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Meet the team

This week, we welcome Roy Evangelista one of our two new software developers. Roy says: I’m a software engineer at Arcanys, a software development company based in Cebu City, Philippines. Most of my experience in the industry centres around web application development, with a particular focus on backend engineering. My work has allowed me to build strong backend expertise, where there’s always exciting and challenging problems to solve. While my passion lies in backend development, I also work on frontend user interface as it’s crucial to creating a well-rounded product.

The challenges I’ve tackled in previous roles are quite different from the problems I’ll be solving here, and I’m excited to both learn and contribute my skills to the team at Air Aware Labs. This role also provides me a unique opportunity to collaborate with and learn from the engineers and experts in the company.

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Get in touch

Please follow Air Aware Labs to stay in touch with our progress. If anything in this newsletter has piqued your interest, please send me (Louise Thomas) or William Hicks a message! You can also email us at hello@airawarelabs.com

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More newsletters

Although the Venture Builder has finished, we will never forget our fellow ZINC teams.  Please read and subscribe to newsletters of others in cohort 7:

• Pavandeep Rai here
• Marjo Palanee here
• Donna Egan here
• Josh Piddock here
• Guy Naor here
• Veronika Bridgman here
• Lisa Rickers here
• Natalia Baltazar here

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