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.

Cohort 5 Recruitment Now Open!

Apply Before Midnight June 16th

2023 Challenge and Opportunity Statements

Customer Experience

Find new ways of creating and adding to our social value.

Ensure the provision of information meets needs and expectations.

Enhance ticket sales including upgrades and enhancements during the journey

Modal Shift

Reward and recognise customers for moving from the car to public transport.

Better understand customer movements and how customers get to and from stations.

Better utilise artificial intelligence in public transport to solve challenges.

Future of Transport

How can we ensure that Transport for Wales is utilising the best of emerging technologies to improve safety, customer experience and our ways of working?

Including but not limited to robotics, machine learning, automation, or any other new emerging opportunities for transport.

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 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

Guidance, mentoring and coaching from innovation delivery experts and decision makers in rail.

Collaboration with TfWR & Partners

Access to live data, customer feedback & testing, TfWR stakeholders & funding partners.

Business growth

The opportunity to win a contract of work and receive funding to launch your product across TfWR

Collaboration

Work with us throughout weekly workshops, coaching you from ideation to pitch.

Our partners

Why work in rail

Be part of a multi-billion pound, growing industry, with a wealth of investment opportunities for innovative projects. Develop technology and innovative solutions that will improve the passenger experience for millions of people and make a real, lasting improvement across Wales.

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.

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