Telecomms innovation

, a Cambridge-based management and product development company, won the telecommunications category at the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET's) Innovation Awards in

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The Innovation Awards selected winners in 15 categories and attracted hundreds of global entries. Sagentia’s winning entry was for a mobile technology platform, M-PESA.

Launched in Kenya last year, M-PESA was developed for Vodafone to provide secure financial services to people without access to banking. M-PESA signed up 200,000 customers in its first 18 weeks and now has more than 1.6 million customers, growing at a rate of 200,000 customers per month.