Etc. at two

At the end of last week, the BT Digital team came together for our annual Digital Live event, where we celebrated the year’s highlights. It was a particularly memorable event, firstly because it coincided with Etc.’s two-year anniversary, and secondly because our very own Becki Lake was selected for a prestigious CEO award for the outstanding work she’s been doing in the fintech space transforming BT’s own payment platform. It was also brilliant to see Margaret Sheyindemi take the stage to share more about what the team have been up to in the past 12 months, with a little help from spoken word artist Rasheeda Page-Muir .??

The event served as a reminder for just how far we’ve come since that day two years ago. Today, with award-winning solutions in healthtech, EV, drone and data intelligence spaces, as well as a new venture into fintech, I can truly say we’re delivering on our ambition to create products and services that change the world.??

Being able to work in a business at the forefront of innovation alongside brilliant friends and colleagues is already a privilege, but to do so whilst building products that genuinely impact the world around us is special. It’s pretty rare too.??

If you’ve followed the Etc. journey for a while, you will have heard me say that we operate as a start-up within a corporate, and I’m proud of how, as a team, we’ve built a culture driven by our start-up mindset. I was lucky enough to reflect on this last month when the whole Etc. team came together in London to look back on our progress as a business, build our strategy for the year ahead and celebrate our successes. In the bustle of the working week, it’s not often that we take time to pause and reflect – and even rarer to have the pleasure of spending time face to face with colleagues across the UK. It was a brilliant day of innovation, a celebration of out-of-the-box thinking, and importantly, an opportunity to recognise what we’ve achieved.??

So, as we reach this milestone, it felt fitting to look back on the journey of the last 12 months.?

Installing the first street cabinet-to-EV charger?

In May we unveiled our first EV charge point powered from a green street cabinet in East Lothian, a major step in a wider trial we’re running which could see up to 60,000 cabinets repurposed. When we first started exploring the EV opportunity, the problem we had to solve was blindingly obvious - we needed to address one of the biggest barriers holding up the UK’s transition away from petrol and diesel vehicles – a lack of charging solutions. By upcycling existing infrastructure, we have a unique opportunity to roll out much-needed public EV charging points at scale and speed. Since we first piloted last summer, it's captured the interest of councils across the UK and media around the globe.?

Bringing Drone SIM to market?

We launched Drone SIM - the UK’s first SIM specifically designed to fly at altitude - towards the end of last year. Designed to enable drones to communicate and operate over longer distances and higher altitudes, drone SIM is pushing the limits of drone flight – meaning they can now fly longer whilst staying in constant communication with remote pilots.??

?Drone SIM is designed with a host of unique characteristics made to withstand high altitudes, wind speeds and temperature extremes, helping keep drones connected no matter how harsh the environment they operate in. By pushing the limits of drone flight, Drone SIM has helped to unlock the true potential of drone operation across the UK to transform industries, from urgent delivery of medical supplies to infrastructure monitoring and transportation of goods.??

Launching BT Tap-To-Pay for small businesses?

In one of our newest and most exciting new partnerships, we joined forces with leading technology platform Adyen this year to launch the BT Tap-to-Pay app - enabling small businesses to accept payments with the tap of an iPhone.? BT has over 1 million business customers – and we know that payments are pain point for them, so we’ve been on a mission to enable businesses to take payments from virtually anywhere, making transactions quicker and easier for everyone. The BT Tap-to-Pay app may be our most recent product launch, but it’s already helped transform the payment ecosystem for small businesses across the UK. ?

Joining forces with Active Intelligence??

We’re always looking at how we can tap into the existing network in new and innovative ways utilising the unique assets we have across BT Group, and as part of that mission our data and insights arm Active Intelligence joined the into the Etc. family earlier this year, creating a home for innovation.?

Active Intelligence helps solve real-world problems by tapping into advanced and precision-based insights around customer behaviour such as location, movement, behavioural data and more. The team uses secure, aggregated, and completely anonymised data from 24 million mobile devices to draw insights that help decision making. Whether that's helping with train scheduling, planning new store locations or where advertising should be placed, these insights help businesses better understand their customers.??

It’s safe to say that the past year has been a wonderful journey of exploration, growth and bold thinking, and we truly couldn’t have done it without the collaboration and support of our colleagues across the business. I am beyond proud of the team and the?impact Etc. has created in just 24 months of existence, and I can’t wait to continue changing the world with the power of BT behind us.?