Founder: Richard Davis
Website: www.virtualgym.tv

Launched in January 2008, Virtual Gym TV is a live broadcasting and on-demand online gym, offering an array of downloadable fitness exercise classes. Dubbing itself the world’s first online gym, the company aims to reach the 85% of the UK population who don’t use the traditional gym or health club options.

To date, Virtual Gym TV has served the needs of some 125,000 employees, and Richard expects this to grow to more than 350,000 during the course of 2010. Corporate clients include Kent County Council, West Hertfordshire NHS Trust and the Metropolitan Police.

Founder: Priya Lakhani
Website: www.masalamasala.co.uk

Barrister Priya had played around with several business ideas before taking the plunge with Masala Masala in 2008. The company produces a range of fresh Indian cooking sauces which are currently stocked by retailers including Waitrose, Harvey Nichols and Ocado.com.

After developing the sauce recipes with her mother, Priya had the product on Waitrose’s shelves less than a year after starting up. Keen to introduce a philanthropic arm to the business from the outset, Priya also set up the Masala Masala Project which provides a meal for a homeless person in India for every pot of sauce sold.

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Founders: Ben Jones, Graham Bosher, Tom Newton, Edd Read, Tom Percival, Neil Thompson, Brendan Kay
Website: www.graze.com

The first business in the UK to send natural whole foods, from freshly cut pineapple to wasabi peas, in the post, Graze.com’s founders include Graham, one of the men behind LOVEFiLM, which uses post in much the same way as DVD delivery. Ben, Tom and Neil owned a design and branding company called Thompson Charles Jones and joined Graham on the venture after he’d had the initial idea. Last year’s postal strikes may have caused a few teething problems but the business has gone from strength-to-strength since. The patent on the special porous plastic film they came up with to prevent spoilage is pending and the company sends out over 120,000 boxes per month.

Founders: Kieran O’Neill, Seb Hayes, Ben Phillips
Website: www.playfire.com

The idea for Playfire came about after observing online behaviour on a previous games reviews venture, PSU.com, founded by the same entrepreneurial trio. Noticing people put information about their favourite games and online friends in their forum signatures, Kieran, Seb and Ben decided to build a site to connect gamers from all over the world. Playfire is the resulting social network. Aimed at console gamers, it tracks the games played, compares scores with friends and recommends new games.

With eight full-time employees, the company also sells games via the site and collects a share of the revenue. The company secured $2.1m in November 2009 which it’s using to expand its development team.

Founders: Azhar Majid Saddique and Kambez Karimi
Website: www.ukequipmentdirect.co.uk

UK Equipment Direct offers a range of energy efficient commercial kitchen equipment which significantly reduces gas and electricity consumption. The company says it reduces energy consumption by around 25% and has already provided greener equipment for more than 175 fast food outlets. Remote monitoring of customers’ equipment also allows the company to keep a constant check on energy usage. Azhar and Kambez are now predicting revenues to top £9m by 2012.

Founder: Mitesh Soma
Website: www.chemistdirect.co.uk

Mitesh’s online pharmacy has gone from strength-to-strength since appearing on our last Startups 100 list, and with turnover on course to double in 2010, there’s no sign of growth slowing down yet. The e-commerce site, which stocks the same products as high street chemists, without the high street price tags, now employs in excess of 50 people.

This year also saw Mitesh take the concept into a different sector with the launch of Stationery Direct which aims to take on the ‘big three’ stationers – Staples, Viking Direct and Ryman. While Mitesh’s offering may not be completely unique, he’s secured market share by building up a loyal customer base of 300,000 registered users who regularly buy from his sites. His plan now is to continue growth and make Chemist and Stationery Direct household names.

Founders: Alicia Navarro and Joe Stepniewski
Website: www.skimlinks.com

Alicia appeared on our last Startups 100 list with Skimbit, an online collaboration tool for friends and family to arrange things such as holidays or flat hunting. However, the business’ focus has now shifted, and thrived as a result. Skimlinks allows online publishers to convert normal links to retailer sites into affiliate links that earn revenue.

The service gives publishers access to more than 6,000 affiliate programmes without having to deal with the administration of the process themselves, giving them an effective method of earning extra revenue for their sites. The service has seen month-on-month growth of 30% throughout the downturn and recently secured a $1.5m funding round led by Sussex Place Ventures.

Founders: Charlie Osmond and Caroline Plumb
Website: www.freshnetworks.com

Award winning social media agency, FreshNetworks, helps businesses engage customers in strategic, online conversations by building and managing online communities. The company enables businesses to engage customers, collect data and valuable insight simply by focusing on community. According to Advertising Age, since its launch in January 2008, the company blog has become one of the most popular in the UK and among the top five in Europe. What’s more, clients include big hitters such as Jimmy Choo and Royal Bank of Scotland.

Founders: James Watt and Martin Dickie
Website: www.brewdog.com

Independent beer makers BrewDog launched their offering in 2007 and have since secured an impressive range of retailers stocking their products such as Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s and Oddbins. The company also exports products to 15 different countries. Co-founder James, who counts Darth Vader among his entrepreneurial heroes, describes the product as beer for punks, but his funky labelling and tongue-in-cheek slogans have won the company a loyal customer base – the business grew by 250% in 2009 despite the tough trading conditions. The boys say they are now turning their attention to building a bigger brewery and even have plans to start up a BrewDog pub.

Founder: Iain Dodsworth
Website: www.tweetdeck.com

Tweetdeck is one of the most popular social networking applications on the web boasting several million users. The service allows users to manage various streams of information coming through their social networking accounts, allowing for easy consumption of information from platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. Founder Iain initially built the application to make his own use of Twitter more efficient and relevant to him, but it proved so popular he soon found himself growing both the team and scale of the venture.

In 2009 Iain secured investment from PROfounders Capital, the fund set up by Bebo founder Michael Birch and Lastminute.com’s Brent Hoberman. He now plans to cement Tweetdeck’s position as the ‘go to app’ for the most influential and active users of social networks.