The diamond jewellery retail market is an $82 billion industry and sees hundreds of millions of diamonds produced each year. Transparency and traceability of supply chains for gemstones to prevent counterfeiting and ensuring ethical supply is an ongoing problem.
Opsydia spun out from the University of Oxford’s Engineering Science department in 2017. Its technology utilises adaptive optics and ultrafast laser processing. This allows for precision laser fabrication of permanent, microscopic structures inside transparent materials without affecting their surfaces. These ‘Nano IDs’ cannot be polished away or counterfeited and provide a way to demonstrate provenance of gemstones, supporting transparency and traceability for ethical supply chains.
Lewis Fish graduated in 2017 from the University of Oxford’s Engineering Science department, where he helped develop adaptive laser fabrication techniques under the supervision of academic founders Professor Martin Booth and Dr Patrick Salter. He joined Opsydia as founding engineer to lead R&D and translate the experimental laser process into a commercial system capable of volume inscription.
At Opsydia, Lewis acts as the internal voice of the customer. He takes responsibility for translating a customer’s vision into suitable demonstrations to drive sales. He sees the Shott Scale up Accelerator as a key tool to supporting this.
He says, “I am interested in hearing about the real experience of mentors and entrepreneurs in low volume–large capital hardware businesses, where interactions with potential customers are incredibly important. I am also looking forward to joining the Enterprise Hub, meeting likeminded entrepreneurs and getting involved with workshops and panel discussions!”
With employee numbers growing, he is interested in learning how to grow sustainably while maintaining the agility of a small team and transitioning from a flexible, generalist team to more distributed teams with focused responsibilities.
Opsydia is in true scale up phase; its first products are deployed for operation with customers and it is trying to expand its sales rapidly. The team has now grown to the point where it is impossible for everyone to be deeply involved in all developments and this has to be managed carefully. It is now looking to greatly expand the number of systems deployed and increase the volume of gemstones secured and traced.
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