Selective investment
We take on companies that fit the philosophy: not every good idea, only the ones that live in the overlap.
About
A philosophy for how companies are founded, funded, and loved.
Itigai is an incubator for companies worth building. The name is a play on Ikigai (a reason for being), applied to how we found, fund, and back businesses. Our work is simple to say and hard to do: Make It Exist.
Ikigai, applied to business.
The strongest companies sit where a founder’s craft, a customer’s real need, and a durable business model overlap. That overlap is Itigai — and from there, we make it exist.
- Founders
- What they are passionate about and genuinely excel at.
- Customers
- What people truly need and will return for.
- Investors
- What can be sustained, and what the world actually needs.
How we work.
Active partnership
Beyond capital: practical help on strategy and operations, and introductions that matter.
Long horizon
We build for lasting value: growth that holds up for customers, founders, and investors alike.
What we hold as non-negotiable.
Purpose with profit
Profitability matters. Purpose makes it durable. We look for both in the same business.
A stronger portfolio
Portfolio companies should strengthen each other through knowledge, introductions, and shared standards.
Integrity first
Transparency, honesty, and accountability. Without those, nothing else holds.
Craft and ambition
Bold thinking and high standards, not theatre.
The founders.
Itigai is led by Martin Callinan and Joel Ratnasothy — operators who have built companies at the hard edges of software, security, and healthcare.
Co-founder
Martin Callinan is a software supply chain and open source specialist with more than twenty years helping organisations manage the risks of modern software development. He is founder and director of Source Code Control Limited, focused on software supply chain security, SBOMs, open source governance, and licence compliance.
He works with businesses to improve visibility and control across their software supply chains — from SBOM generation and management and Software Composition Analysis (SCA) through to open source risk management and governance. He also advises on emerging regulatory and security requirements, including the Cyber Resilience Act, NIS2, and DORA.
A recognised industry speaker, Martin contributes regularly to discussions on software supply chain security, SBOM standards, open source governance, and frameworks such as ISO/IEC 5230.
Co-founder
Joel Ratnasothy believes the UK needs to fundamentally reorganise how it delivers healthcare, education, and social justice — and that a different approach, with the judicious use of technology, can make that possible.
He has worked as an NHS surgeon, an Imperial College academic, a global business executive, and an entrepreneur. That mix of industry, public sector, and academic experience shapes how he sees the challenges ahead, and the skills needed to tackle them.