Accelerate your business in 3 months
Design, Develop and pitch your MVP to win a contract of work with Transport for Wales Rail… in 3 months! Join our rail innovation accelerator programme and scaleup your business.
How we help your start-up
We accelerate tech start-ups with our 12-week accelerator programme, in partnership with Transport for Wales Rail, by delivering innovation workshops, mentoring & training covering
Market Research
Customer Insights
Value Proposition Design
Prototyping
Validation
Developing a Minimal Viable Product
Demo Day
Validation
Developing a Minimal Viable Product
Demo Day
Our previous Cohorts
300+
Start ups applied for our cohorts
40+
Start ups shortlisted
19
Start ups worked with
13
Start ups taken to business case review
Want to follow in their footsteps?
Our latest Demo Day
Watch the video from our latest Demo Day
Why participate?
If you have a product or service that can benefit Transport for Wales Rail processes, or improve passenger experience, we’d love to hear from you.
Participants will collaborate with mentors across the innovation sector and Transport for Wales Rail. This expertise will help your start up refine and develop a product fit-for-purpose for the rail industry, and then make a pitch to decision makers from Transport for Wales Rail.
Successful pitches will be awarded a contract of work, to fund the remainder of the project and produce a product or service that has real world impact across Transport for Wales Rail.
Benefits of our programme
Mentoring from industry experts
Collaboration with TfWR & Partners
Business growth
Collaboration
Work with us throughout weekly workshops, coaching you from ideation to pitch.
Our partners
Why work in rail
Showcase your product and business to the wider network of partners and stakeholders associated with Transport for Wales Rail. Be part of an industry that will give your start-up the opportunities to be innovative, to grow and to be successful.
Cohort 4 problem statements
Customer Support
Reward and recognise customers for loyalty.
Offer the best value for money.
Ensuring the provision of information meets needs and expectations.
Ensure the network can attract people (existing users and new) following the pandemic.
Achieving Net Zero
Support EV charging for cars and buses.
Make environments greener to help achieve zero carbon.
Reduce energy usage at stations.
Engage and educate people around carbon and greener ways to travel.
Harvest and use our own energy.
Future of Transport
What solutions will transport need in the future? This could incorporate big data, AI, automation, robotics or any technology that has not yet been used in transport.
How can we ensure that in the future we have high level flexible plans for fleet that will improve operational efficiency and reliability?
Revenue and Social
Find new ways of creating value for the people of Wales and its borders.
Make stations a destination.
Find new ways of adding to our social value.
Make the most of our opportunities to generate revenue.
Reducing anti-social behaviour.
Our experience throughout the Lab was excellent. The 12-week process really encouraged us to review and re-evaluate our approach, helping us to dig deeper into the problems faced by customers and identify the core business needs.
Wordnerds
Overall, we felt that the TFW are forward looking and are completely open to embrace and adopt innovations in ways not only to help improve the experience of their customers but also safeguard the health and wellbeing of their staff. They do it such that it encourages and helps out emerging start-ups. TFWLab programme is a great initiative that facilitates this.
SpatialCortex
Overall, we felt that the TFW are forward looking and are completely open to embrace and adopt innovations in ways not only to help improve the experience of their customers but also safeguard the health and wellbeing of their staff. They do it such that it encourages and helps out emerging start-ups. TFWLab programme is a great initiative that facilitates this.
Windowseater