PURELIFI has been crowned Scotland’s most innovative technology company for 2020 after securing backing from both a high-profile judging panel and readers of tech publication BusinessCloud.

Headquartered in Edinburgh, pureLiFi is a world leader in a fledgling technology which enables secure data transmission via the light spectrum rather than radio waves and is already capable of achieving gigabit internet speeds, with the potential to reach tens of gigabits per second.

Alistair Banham, pureLiFi CEO, told BusinessCloud that their technology can be integrated into products such as mobile phones, tablets, displays and lighting devices.

He said: “The light spectrum is 1000 times the bandwidth of the RF (radio frequency) spectrum. LiFi is like a motorway while RF is a country road: you can simply push a lot more traffic through with light rather than radio. LiFi will become the biggest bearer of data within future networks.

“LiFi is a disruptive technology with almost limitless applications. The scale of opportunity is massive.”

On topping the Scotland Tech 50 ranking, he added: “It’s a great honour to be crowned Scotland’s most innovative tech company. Innovation is one of our core values and it’s extremely rewarding for the entire team to be recognised for it.

“We all have one vision in mind: to take this LiFi technology mainstream.”

Second in BusinessCloud’s regional ranking for Scotland was Edinburgh’s TVSquared, which provides analytics for TV ad campaigns.

Vertical farming tech firm Intelligent Growth Solutions was third after topping the table in 2019.

AI-enabled cancer-fighting company ClinSpec Dx and satellite network R3IoT, which serves remote regions, rounded out the top five.

Edinburgh’s Biscuit Tin, a secure online vault for managing ‘end-of-life’ wishes, was one of 11 new entrants to crack the top 15.

The capital contributed exactly half of the top 50 companies, followed by Glasgow (14), Dundee (4) and Aberdeen (3).

Glasgow led the way in the top 10, with four firms, ahead of Edinburgh (3) and one apiece from Dundee, Inverness and Newhouse.