Britain's "umbilical entrepreneurs" have a message for Santa...
Babygros and cuddly toys are so last century. Today, the best present you can give your newborn baby is a £1,500 set of stem cells.
“It might just save a child’s life,” explains Shamshad Ahmed, CEO and founder of Smart Cells, a London-based company that collects umbilical cord blood stem cells that are then frozen in liquid nitrogen and banked for up to 25 years.
Such cells have the potential to treat a host of illnesses in the future.
Wayne Channon, chairman of Brighton-based Cells4Life, is another entrepreneur who believes it is a growing industry and has put serious money into Cells4Life.
This is no industry for the faint-hearted, mind you. Start-up costs are mega. And in how many industries do your employees have to be vetted by the Human Tissue Authority?
And as for technology back-up, "you have to have completely fail-safe systems so the labs can be monitored on a 24/7 basis,” says Channon.
More on this, er, growing industry in the October issue of Real Business magazine. Or watch this space for the next chapter.