Accommodation for Students

Accommodation for Students is the No1 student accommodation finder worldwide. The company was started by William Berry and Simon Thompson when they were students in Manchester.
The company now has 350,000 registered student users and 10,000 landlords advertising 30,000 properties across the country.
The company brings students together with their ideal home and ideal housemates. They have offices in both London and Manchester, with the London office currently employing 20 people of which about a third work from home as well as the office. They also have a specialist international team so they can find accommodation for people around the world coming to study in the UK.

Alice Bowe – English Landscape and Garden Design (Nottingham and London)

Artist and garden designer Alice has developed a company that makes garden design convenient and hassle-free. In addition to the traditional bespoke garden design service that is aimed at the luxury, cash rich, time poor market, Alice continues to develop and launch innovative and scalable products that have wider market appeal - exploiting gaps in the market - and piggybacking off the growing kudos of her bespoke service brand. Garden Design By Post is a lower cost design service aimed at property developers and first time buyers. This fixed fee service represents a 75% consumer saving because of the time saved by cutting out site visits and face-to-face meetings.

Athena Care Limited (Based in Leicester)

Athena Care provide local and national service support independence and choice for individuals with personal care, daily living, shopping, social care, and domestic needs.
The organisation is a member of Ceretas (Formally the British Association of Domiciliary Care), Action on Elder Abuse and the National Homecare Council.
The services are open to individuals who experience physical disabilities, learning difficulties, and mental health difficulties; intermediate care requirements, sensory impairment, dual sensory impairment, dementia and acquired brain injury.
Athena Care has a rigorous selection procedure for each carer on their database, to make sure customers receive the highest standard of care.

The Black Farmer (Devon and London)

Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones (aka The Black Farmer®) is a man with a mission. Not only has he made his mark as the only black farmer in the UK fulfilling his own personal dream, but he has to his credit one of the food industry’s most successful new brand launches – The Black Farmer®.
The Black Farmer® markets premium sausages and allied meat products made to the company’s own recipe. It is a distinctive, professional brand designed to bring innovation to a marketplace dominated by supermarket own label products and brands with very low specification.
Flavours without Frontiers – the promise offered by his products also goes some way to sum up his personality. He, nor his products, will be confined by race, convention or tradition.

Blinkx (Cambridge and San Francisco)

Launched in December 2004 by Suranga Chandratilake, www.blinkx.tv is the world’s first search engine for video. blinkx.tv is an intuitive free service enabling users to search the Web for a wide range of multimedia content, ranging from news to entertainment to the latest podcasts and video blogs.
blinkx offers a fundamentally different approach to search, which is achieved through its unique and ground-breaking technology. blinkx spiders the Web using advanced speech recognition and transcription techniques, allowing it to analyse and understand the exact content of an audio/video file. This delivers unparalleled automatic accuracy and access for blinkx users.

Bundles Ltd (Hexham)

Bundles Ltd is first internet mortgage auction in the UK to bring borrowers and lenders into a market that delivers benefits to both parties. Borrowers with similar needs are grouped together in bundles, which are then auctioned to lenders.
In short it is a market place where mortgage borrowers and lenders come together to get the benefit of market forces and scale.
In an industry that boasts over 8,000 products and where 65% of mortgages go through an intermediary, Bundles breaks the mould with a simple and direct channel. Their unique concept groups borrowers with similar needs and characteristics into bundles which are auctioned to lenders, as lenders drop their price to obtain the business all the benefit goes to the borrowers in the bundle.

eCourier

eCourier is a rapidly growing logistics business in the UK that is revolutionising the delivery market as a result of its as a result of its unique, custom-developed technology. Since it began operations in September 2004, the company has experienced a phenomenal rate of growth (40+% per month), attracting numerous high profile clients including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, AON and Harrods.
This is principally due to several “world first” added-value offerings that have created differentiation in an otherwise commoditised marketplace. eCourier operates out of a warehouse off Brick Lane in London’s East End. The company currently employs 27 staff and is supported by a network of subcontracted couriers numbering around 100.

Extreme Group (London)

Al Gosling, CEO, Extreme Group and Extreme Sports Channel, developed a passion for extreme sports during his early teens and following a number of jobs went on to set up a business that would rapidly grow into the Extreme Group.
Running on a shoestring budget, from an office in a converted barn more akin to a mountain hut or surf-shack than the headquarters of a fast growing media business, Al and the team rapidly agreed a number of deals with producers and broadcasters to sell and distribute extreme and action sports television programmes all over the world.
The channel's coverage grew very rapidly and today it is now broadcasting to more than 38 million homes across 55 countries in 12 languages, including SKY in the UK, Canal Satellite in France and Canal Plus in Scandinavia. www.extreme.com.

First Recovery (London)

First Recovery provides no-cost disaster and data recovery to SME customers via insurance industry partners.
Small businesses resist spending time and money on disaster recovery; and 40% of them perform no data backups either (source: DTI). First Recovery is unique. Insurers pay us to provide our service as a 'free of charge' extra service to their SME clients, thereby removing these obstacles: it is embedded and integral to the insurance policies.
In the event of a disaster, we provide access to over 450 fully-furnished office locations throughout the UK, plus an IT network with the client's own data already loaded (via our online data backup facility - up to 2GB of which is also free-of-charge to the client), plus telephone redirection facilities and reconnection to email and the internet.

FreshMinds (London)

FreshMinds is an innovative research and recruitment consultancy providing a creative, flexible and responsive service for our clients. The company draws on an unrivalled network of the brightest executives, MBAs and graduates in Europe (the Minds).
FreshMinds unique business model means that they have around 50 - 100 freelance researchers or ”Minds” working for them every week. By operating a ‘hot-desk’ system the freelancers can work with the in-house research team. The ‘Minds’ also work on short-term placements with clients as well as working on projects from home using webmail and their own internet and telephone connections.

Glasses Direct (Based in Wiltshire)

Glassesdirect.co.uk has introduced a new way to buy prescription glasses over the internet by phone and mail order. The business was set up 18 months ago by James Murray Wells in his final year at university. He needed a pair of reading glasses and was horrified at the £150 price tag. After some research, Murray Wells discovered the actual cost of making a pair of glasses was £7, including the frame! He has since sold over 40,000 pairs of glasses and had over 4 million hits to his website.
Glassesdirect.co.uk enables people who possibly could not afford glasses before to have the eye care they deserve.

GoinGreen (London)

GoinGreen created the market for zero emission electric cars with the launch of the G-Wiz in London. The companies social purpose is to fight climate change by providing low cost, low carbon vehicles that take the pollution out of the air and the cost out of motoring. The unique business model is entirely internet based and viral, with no dealers, showrooms, advertising, brochures or car salesmen. The business operates from a workshop in Southall, linked by internet voice and telephony to our manufacturer in India. I operate remotely from my laptop and mobile, as do our team of mobile service engineers that provide home / office based mobile servicing for our 500 customers in London.

Lawyers Direct (London)

Lawyers Direct is a revolutionary law firm which enables companies to receive the most personalised service, delivered by a team of superbly experienced city trained solicitors, without the high fees normally associated with city law firms.
The company has removed all unnecessary overheads such as support staff, junior and trainee lawyers, large offices and equity partners. Traditional overheads such as office space has been replaced by state-of-the-art technology. Solicitors are recruited with at least five years quality commercial experience gained in major City law firms. They establish a fully-functioning home office which includes computer with required software applications, broadband internet access and a dedicated telephone line.

MAC Services

MAC Services are a group of electricians in central London always on the move from one site to another on emergency call outs
MAC Services are an electrical contracting company situated in Central London. A group of 10 electricians who carry out repairs and maintenance – who use the technology of PDAs to aide their work.
The jobs are issuing via the PDA system and the central office can track the movements of the electrician once the job has been accepted.
Whilst the job is in progress we can keep the client informed of the exact progress. When the electrician has completed the work and obtains a signature on the PDA, he emails the report back to the accounts department ready to invoice. The PDAs also allow the electrician the opportunity to photograph or video the work so parts can be ordered or problems can be logged.

Mr and Mrs Smith (London)

Mr and Mrs Smith (aka James Lohan and Tamara Heber Percy) is an innovative boutique hotel collection featuring a handpicked selection of hotels all over the world. From publishing best-selling guidebooks in 2003 and 2004 (120,000 sold so far) the company decided to launch a bookable website so members can access, check availability and book recommendations from their desktops.
Mr & Mrs Smith have deliberately adapted their business model over an accelerated period (3 years) from being simply a guide book publisher, to an online booking service for a highly-selective collection of boutique hotels.

OutSec (Norfolk)

OutSec is an ambitious and innovative internet company that provides high quality dedicated typing and digital transcription services to a broad range of UK companies.
Modern information and communication technologies are changing the way both businesses in the UK operate and the way in which workers can provide services to them. Until recently outsourcing was a simple cost-cutting manoeuvre. Today it is a strategic initiative for companies large and small. Outsourcing in the UK has yet to experience the growth seen in the US and the UK market is still relatively immature.
OutSec has the experience, software and strategies in place to benefit from the increase in demand.

The Pure Package (London)

The Diet Delivered to your Door! The ultimate convenience, The Pure Package delivers three delicious, nutritious meals and two appetizing snacks straight to the client's door every day in a temperature controlled bag. All food is fresh, free range, GM free, and ethically sourced. Consistent high quality of service, excellent feedback and favourable media coverage have combined to give the company a very satisfied client base, including Michelin starred chefs, top athletes and high profile celebrities.
Technology has always being at the forefront of the business as it is largely based over the internet and registration is done over the telephone. The Pure Package was originally born from the founder Jennifer Irvine’s home in London, literally from the kitchen sink. It then moved to the New Covent Garden Market, the biggest fresh food market in the UK.

Toptable.co.uk

Toptable.co.uk has pioneered online restaurant booking in the UK and Europe. Consumers can book for every occasion, from an intimate dinner for two at a Michelin Star restaurant to a casual supper at a local pizza place. The specialist events division makes reservations for parties up to several thousand and works with many major corporations.
toptable.co.uk has built its significant loyal customer base through ground breaking site content (360 degree restaurant photography, dynamic diner ratings/feedback, editorial and unrivalled restaurant offers). Today toptable.co.uk features restaurants throughout the UK, Dublin, Barcelona, Paris and New York.

Trichocare Diagnostics Ltd (Bedfordshire)

In collaboration with Cranfield’s Institute of Bioscience and Technology, Trichocare Diagnostics designed, patented and now manufactures and markets Colourstart. The tiny product is a smart, clean and practical method of filtering-out clients in hairdressing salons who may be one of an estimated 2% of the UK population with an allergy to hair dye.
Salons that don’t test clients invalidate their professional indemnity cover and are often successfully sued for professional negligence by clients who suffer reactions - sometimes severe. Colourstart improves both service and safety in today’s salon.

Waterscan (Chichester)

Waterscan is a water conservation company designed for business consumers, providing water audit and investigations, leak detection surveys and repairs. Three distinct services help the company’s customers understand, monitor and then reduce water usage. An online database manages the water audit projects for customers by recording water invoices, monitoring consumption and targeting high users. The key to the system is instant communication between the customers and engineers via email, text message or online reporting.
The database currently supports over 50,000 sites for clients including Tesco, Whitbread and Royal Mail. The system is part of the Green Technology Challenge launched by the Government in 2001 for business investment in environmentally friendly technologies available at www.eca-water.gov.uk.