Investor Tej Kohli Expands ‘Venture Philanthropy’ Into 3d-printed Bionic Arms
29.11.2019 10:00:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
Investor Tej Kohli is to fund the purchase of ten bionic arms for children with limb differences in the UK. The Tej Kohli Foundation hopes that its commitment to fund arms for ten children over the next 5 months as part of its ‘Future Bionics’ program will highlight how assistive technology can substantially improve the lives and confidence of young people living with disabilities. The Tej Kohli Foundation hopes to inspire and influence other healthcare institutions to follow this lead and discover the advanced 3D-printed technology.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191128005558/en/
Tej Kohli Foundation co-Founder Wendy Kohli, Tilly Lockey wearing Open Bionics arms, Tej Kohli Foundation co-Founder Tej Kohli, future Hero Arm recipient Jacob Pickering, future Hero Arm recipient Harris Gribble (Photo: Business Wire)
In England the National Health Service (‘NHS’) currently provides a single-grip myoelectric-controlled (‘myo’) prosthesis at a cost of approximately £8,000. However, the Open Bionics Hero Arm can be controlled with the electrical signals generated by a user’s muscles and has superior multi-grip functionality that enables users to perform many more everyday activities.
The Open Bionics Hero Arm costs £10,000 through a private prosthetics clinic in the UK, whereas other advanced multi-grip bionic hands cost £30,000 - £60,000. The Tej Kohli Foundation will spend an initial £100,000 to launch its ‘Future Bionics’ programme, which will enable ten British children to access not just a superior technology, but a better life.
The first Hero Arm recipient is 10-year-old Jacob Pickering from Blackburn, who will receive his new Hero Arm just in time for Christmas. Jacob was born without his right arm as a result of amniotic band syndrome. All Jacob has spoken about for the past month is the Hero Arm, and his father David is “completely overwhelmed” that Jacob has been selected for a donation and claims that it will “change Jacob’s life”. The second Hero Arm recipient is 14-year-old Harris Gribble from Exeter, who is a keen Rugby and Cricket player.
The lightweight Hero Arm is currently the only multi-grip myo prosthetic arm that is available for paediatric use. The enhanced ability of the user to be able to personalise their 3D-printed Open Bionics Hero Arm is also a huge boost to mental well-being and to perceived social acceptance. This is particularly important for younger people.
Investor Tej Kohli first discovered Bristol-based Open Bionics when he invested into ‘Rewired’, a robotics-focused venture studio ‘with a humanitarian bent’ that was a very-early backer of Open Bionics in 2017.
Tej Kohli, Co-Founder of the Tej Kohli Foundation said:
“We started the Tej Kohli Foundation in 2005 with a project to provide daily meals for 1,000 children in Costa Rica. Since then the Tej Kohli Foundation has supported projects all over the world and helped tens of thousands of people, especially those living with disability. This gift of ten bionic arms is the first project that we have ever initiated in the UK. I see it as just the beginning, and my hope is that this gift will help to highlight the positive difference that technology can make to the confidence and prospects of a younger person. We’re doing this as an example, but we hope that others will follow our lead. These technologies are now so accessible and affordable that healthcare organisations such as the NHS should do more to embrace and improve access to them for disabled young people.”
Samantha Payne, Co-Founder and COO of Open Bionics said:
“We’re really grateful to the Tej Kohli Foundation for pledging to fund advanced bionic arms for ten children in the UK. These children are amongst dozens of people with upper limb differences in the UK fundraising right now for a Hero Arm. We've worked really hard to achieve a price point for the device that is acceptable for existing NHS budgets for prosthetic provision, and we very much hope the NHS sees how helpful these devices are and will begin offering them to the people who need them.”
Children and adults with below-elbow limb differences can register their interest at www.openbionics.com.
Images and profiles of the recipients of the Hero Arms can be downloaded here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wakjc66nz1ljjpb/AADwtFqgu7j-xhEtTRzYuBdsa?dl=0
About Open Bionics
Open Bionics was founded in 2014 by Joel Gibbard and Samantha Payne with the goal of developing affordable, assistive devices that enhance the human body. In other words, Open Bionics turns disabilities into superpowers. The Bristol-based bionics company is known globally for using 3D printing and 3D scanning, along with some clever software and design, to make advanced, affordable and accessible bionic limbs. In May 2018, the company released the Hero Arm, the world’s first medically approved 3D-printed bionic arm, and the very first multi-grip bionic arm for children as young as eight years old. The Hero Arm is available now through private prosthetic clinics all around the world. Open Bionics have a development contract with NHS England, with the aim of offering the Hero Arm on the NHS in the UK. They also have royalty-free licensing agreements with Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Eidos Montreal and Twentieth Century Fox, making science fiction a reality.
About the Tej Kohli Foundation
Founded in 2005, the Tej Kohli Foundation seeks to make interventions that transform individual lives. It is best known for its global mission to end corneal blindness, which disproportionately impacts young people in poorer countries. Since 2015 the Foundation has funded free corneal transplants in poor communities in India; and in 2019 the Foundation gifted $2m to Mass Eye and Ear in Boston, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, to support the development of new technologies to cure blindness.
Through its ‘Impact Initiatives’ the Tej Kohli Foundation also makes direct interventions into the lives of young people whose confidence and prospects can be substantially improved. Previous ‘Impact Initiatives’ have included financial support for disabled children in Costa Rice, feeding schoolchildren at after-school clubs in poor communities, and also producing a short film to highlight the plight of young people in India living with a rare genetic disease.
http://www.tejkohlifoundation.com
About Tej Kohli
Tej Kohli is a London-based investor and philanthropist who first rose to success selling technology solutions and payments software during the dot com boom. His current focus is as a real estate investor within the world’s newly emerging technology hubs, and as a backer of high-impact AI, robotics and genomics ventures that have the potential to transform lives and change the world. He is also a major esports investor.
Tej Kohli is a distinguished Alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur (IITK) where he completed a degree in Electrical Engineering.
END
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191128005558/en/
Contact information
To request interviews please use the contact details below:
Helen Tarbet / Simon Compton / Kim van Beeck / Hannah Ratcliff
(Buchanan Communications)
kohliventures@buchanan.uk.com
+44 207 466 5000
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Icon Solutions Showcases How Banks Can Accelerate Digital Asset Innovation with IPF9.6.2026 12:30:00 EEST | Press release
Icon Solutions – the UK fintech enabling banks to design and implement state-of-the-art payment systems – has released a reference implementation showing how banks can use the Icon Payments Framework (IPF) to accelerate support for payments processing using distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based digital assets. As IPF is agnostic to both the type of digital asset and the DLT network on which they are issued, the risk of fragmentation is reduced as adoption scales. There is growing momentum for digital assets such as stablecoins, tokenised deposits, deposit tokens and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to enable faster, cheaper and smarter payments. Yet the emergence of different digital asset types and DLT networks – which must also work with existing financial infrastructure – creates fragmentation and operational complexity for banks. This is compounded by legacy vendor solutions that limit choice and lock banks in, making it slow, costly and risky to make the changes require
monday.com Appoints Ben Barnett General Manager of EMEA to Drive Next Phase of Regional Growth9.6.2026 11:00:00 EEST | Press release
monday.com (Nasdaq: MNDY), the AI work platform that turns strategy into execution at scale, today announced Ben Barnett’s appointment to General Manager (GM) of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, marking a major milestone in the company’s global expansion. Ben, who has been with monday.com for five years, brings a decade of experience in senior B2B sales roles at software companies and has overseen significant, sustained growth at monday.com in the UK and Ireland since joining in 2021. In his new position, Ben’s priorities include delivering the monday.com’s EMEA go-to-market strategy, fostering key partnerships, and bolstering its newly announced AI work platform. He is based in London. Ben’s promotion comes as monday.com builds on a period of rapid regional success, with EMEA revenue up 26% year-on-year in 2025. Last year, monday.com expanded its regional EMEA headquarters in Fitzrovia, London, now occupying 80,000 sq ft across three floors where more than 370 employees are based,
Interactive Brokers Launches Commission-Free iShares ETFs from BlackRock through Recurring Investment Feature Across Europe9.6.2026 11:00:00 EEST | Press release
Interactive Brokers (Nasdaq: IBKR), an automated global broker, today announced the launch of Commission-Free ETFs within its Recurring Investment feature for eligible individual investors across the European Economic Area. Investors can now access more than 500 commission-free iShares ETFs from BlackRock spanning a broad range of asset classes and strategies, including bonds, equities, themes and sectors. The iShares ETFs available on the IBKR platform give individual investors an accessible, cost-efficient way to build well-diversified portfolios. Since investors pay no trading commissions, more of their capital stays invested and compounding over time, while a broad selection of funds across asset classes makes it straightforward to construct and rebalance portfolios. iShares ETFs are available commission-free through IBKR's Recurring Investments feature, allowing investors to automate their periodic ETF contributions. Clients can select individual ETFs or ETF portfolios, set a cont
Forrester Reveals The Top 10 Highest-Performing Brands In Its 2026 Global Total Experience Score Rankings At Its CX Events9.6.2026 10:30:00 EEST | Press release
According to Forrester’s (Nasdaq: FORR) 2026 global Total Experience Score rankings of 375 brands evaluated across Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America in 2025 and 2026, 41% improved their scores while only 3% declined. A compelling total experience — calculated by combining Forrester’s Customer Experience Index (CX Index™), Brand Experience Index (BX Index™), and, for the first time, the new Employee Experience Index (EX Index™) into a unified view of performance — can drive outsized growth for brands. While brand experience and customer experience can each drive revenue independently, the impact multiplies when they are orchestrated together as a unified total experience. In the US, for example, companies delivering a strong total experience see significantly higher returns from retention and enrichment: Automotive firms achieve a 2.6x revenue lift and retailers see a 3.8x increase. The new research finds that CX scores improved in North America, European brands remained mostly st
IQM Announces Novel Quantum Error Correction Approach Toward Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing9.6.2026 10:00:00 EEST | Press release
IQM Quantum Computers, the global leader in superconducting quantum computers, has developed a novel quantum error-correcting code that achieves up to three orders of magnitude lower logical error rates than the surface code, also requiring up to eight times fewer physical qubits. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260609533201/en/ IQM´s breakthrough technology, called barbell codes. Unlike many alternative high-performance quantum error-correction approaches, the new code also maintains a comparatively low hardware complexity, marking a significant advancement toward scalable fault-tolerant quantum computing. Quantum error correction remains one of the defining challenges in the race toward practical quantum computing. Errors introduced by noise must be corrected faster than they accumulate, a requirement that previous approaches demanded either complex hardware or significant performance trade-offs, which IQM's
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom