Founders: Ben Way and Paul Williams
Founded: October 2010 (launched April 2011)
Website: www.freetricity.net

Co-founded by serial entrepreneur and member of our Young Gun Alumni Ben Way, and successful business leader Paul Williams, Freetricity looks set to change Britain’s environmental landscape. Formed out of a keen desire to make a positive difference, Freetricity provides residential households with free solar installations. It does so by leveraging the government’s Feed in Tariff scheme which provides financial incentives to those using renewable energies. The central motivation for the company was to help open up a new market for people who were unable to fund solar installations but who wanted to cut their energy bills and ‘do their bit’ for the environment. Supported by a range of financial institutions, including Lombard and Downing Equity, the socially-minded company has achieved continued success with over 20,000 customers and turnover figures of £16m for 2012. Currently in the development stages of a ‘revolutionary’ product that will allow users to store energy in their homes and offices, the energy provider is set to accelerate its growth over the next year. Projecting revenue of £24m, its business model serves to demonstrate the endless opportunities of mixing a social cause with a profitable idea. 

Founders: Michael Hayman and Nick Giles
Founded: January 2010
Website: www.wearesevenhills.com

The self-styled ‘campaigning communications firm’ made our list in 2012 for its explosive arrival on the PR scene – it almost immediately became a leading name amongst the start-up and entrepreneur community despite the challenges offered by the recession. The last 12 months have proved that Seven Hills is no flash in the pan; it continues to add to its roster of prestigious clients (which include Dragons’ Den star Peter Jones, Virgin Media – that’s our Richard Branson target ticked off the list and Global Entrepreneurship Week) and has become Britain’s fastest growing PR agency in the process, with the company well on target to hit £3m in revenue this year. Seven Hills’ extraordinary growth is underpinned by the founders’ relentless ambition for the firm, who say they expect the company to have the same impact on the marketing world that advertising giant Saatchi’s had in the 1980s. 

Founder: Anneka Chauhan
Founded: August 2012
Website: http://i-stayput.com

Founded just two years ago, i-stay, ‘the bag strap that stays put,’ has already made a name for itself in the luggage industry. Founder Anneka Chauhan, a regular commuter, came up with the idea after she ran to catch a train and her bag slipped, causing her to drop hot coffee over herself. She came home with the aim to purchase a non-slip bag but searched the internet to no avail, so, out of what she calls ‘necessity’, the i-stay was born. Composed of a webbed shoulder pad and non-slip plastic compound the one of a kind patented product has proved a major hit, with the business on set to achieve £3m turnover this year. Major luggage retailer Antler recently partnered with the firm to include the bag strap on its bestseller ultimate traveller bag and the strap has received backing from the College of Chiropractors. With regular press coverage and a host of high street stores, including Ryman, as its clients, the company has ambitious growth plans for the next year. Currently extending its range to include a variety of colours, this bag-strap business looks set to progress without a slip!

Founders: Daniel Land and Jeremy Sanders
Founded: April 2011
Website: www.cocodimama.co.uk

Coco Di Mama makes our list for the second year running as its offering of quality, quick-service Italian food continues to be a hit with busy City workers. Although the Fleet Street area is not exactly short of places to grab lunch, Jeremy Sanders and Daniel Land spotted an opportunity when they saw that amongst all the Pret a Mangers and Eats no-one was offering quality, quick-service Italian food. Since launch in 2011, the business has become a staple of local office workers in the central London area with its high quality food and coffee quickly gaining a stellar word-of-mouth reputation. The mini-chain has also grabbed the attention of investors such as ex-Marks and Spencer chairman Sir Stuart Rose, who have backed the business with more than £1m to date. The duo opened a third outlet in May this year and have ambitious plans to open another soon; London’s appetite for Coco Di Mama shows no signs of abating.

Co-founders: Sophia Webster, Nicholas Kirkwood and Christopher Suarez
Founded: May 2012 
Website: www.sophiawebster.co.uk

Having graduated from the Royal College of Art where she studied a specialised MA in footwear, Sophia Webster wanted to utilise her specialist skillset and eye for creativity to create a memorable brand. With the help of renowned shoe designer Nicholas Kirkwood, who Webster worked for as an assistant and the aid of fashion visionary Christopher Suarez she set about creating a range of shoes and handbags that were an ‘aesthetic completely her own with a marked femininity’. Just one year on and the company’s cutting edge designs, which include embellishments of pink flamingos, stationary and butterflies, have graced the pages of numerous high fashion magazines, with Webster awarded the New Gen Award for the second consecutive year by the British Fashion Council. Firmly establishing herself and her brand as a big name in the retail sphere, Webster is set to debut her Autumn/Winter collection at London Fashion Week this September, as well as partnering with Nail Rock to launch her own nail line. Despite only having two employees, Webster’s designs seem to sell themselves, with projected turnover figures of £4.5m for 2013. 

Founders: Doug Munro and Andrew Hunter
Founded: July 2011
Website: www.adzuna.co.uk

Andrew Hunter and Doug Munro have confidence classified search engine Adzuna is destined to become the biggest and best not only in the UK, but globally.  After appearing as number 21 in the 2012 Startups 100 list, an aggressive international roll-out is taking place this year which will see the company expand to cover jobs in Europe and the US. Users in the UK can already use the site to search two million live classified listings for property, cars and job vacancies. It has differentiated itself through features such as its ability to connect with Facebook or LinkedIn to personalise search results, and has recently raised venture capital of £2m (after two earlier seed rounds of £800,000) from the likes of Index Ventures, Passion Capital and The Accelerator Group. With revenue increasing at 50% per quarter and the launch of brand new tool Jobsworth this summer, a UK-first which predicts the salaries of listed jobs based on their contents, there are no signs that the firm’s journey is about to slow down.

Founders: Dominic Joseph and Adam Ludwin
Founded: July 2011 
Website: www.captify.co.uk

In just two years, Captify Media has grown at a rapid pace and as the first company in Europe to specialise in search retargeting it’s not hard to see why. Its ‘cutting-edge’ technology enables advertisers to display banners to users based on their recent searches on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Created from a goal to ‘break the mould’ of the advertising industry and its ‘old methods’, Dominic Joseph and Adam Ludwin wanted to provide a solution that would focus on a more transparent system and add value to an advertisers media spend. Its unique approach which allows brands to pin-point their desired audience has attracted a range of major international companies including British Airways, Peugeot and Sony and it now works with over 70 clients a month. With an investment of £1.2m from Panoramic Growth in May, the media firm has recently hired new staff and is in the process of opening offices in New York and Germany, with further overseas expansion planned for next year. 

Founders: Ed Boyes and Patrick Drake
Founded: January 2012
Website: www.hellofresh.co.uk

Hello Fresh seeks to transform the way people cook and eat and its unique service, which delivers healthy recipe boxes to enable its customers to ‘cook delicious dinners at home,’ has already began to transform Britain’s eating habits. The online subscription service enables users to choose a box of three-five meals from a selection of ranges and portioned ingredients, from seared steak salad to Dorset pastry tarts, and have it delivered to their door the same day. With ingenious step-by-step recipe cards and photographs included with the boxes, Ed Boyes and Patrick Drake are making it easy for people to not only make meals from scratch, but, to learn how to become better cooks. Young entrepreneur Boyes, who graduated from Oxford with two start-ups already under his belt, had a keen passion for food and after meeting experienced chef Drake, the duo launched their grocery service with a twist. With £2m turnover for its first year and thousands of customers; the business delivered three million meals in 2012, the company looks set to succeed in its mission to enable and encourage Britons to eat fresh.

Founded: January 2012
Founder: Graeme Reid
Website: www.mac-l.com

As an operations director working for a maritime consultancy Graeme Reid had first-hand experience of how the oil and gas industry had become traditionalist, out of ideas and stuck in its ways, and he realised that the market was ripe for a disruptive company to shakes things up. Maritime Assurance & Consulting (MAC) offers a range of support services to the marine, construction, drilling and floating production industries around the world with a strong commitment to quick response times, quality customer service and depth of expertise. Despite some initial difficulties challenging norms in what was a tired, tough and largely closed market the consultancy soon gained traction and can now count itself as an increasingly important player in the lucrative oil and gas sector, with BP Exploration, Centrica, Total and Chevron amongst its international clients and a turnover of £2.3m last year. The company relocated to larger premises in 2012 and anticipates major growth over the next year, having just won some major contracts. 

Founder: Carey Bunks and Samy Trigui
Founded: August 2012
Website: www.senscraft.com

For countless retailers and companies, there’s no doubt that mobile represents a huge opportunity, but how to actually get involved in selling through a mobile channel is daunting to say the least. Enter Carey Bunks’ and Samy Trigui’s Senscraft, which delivers mobile platforms for such companies. The demand for their services is evidenced by the fact that the start-up has had customers and been profitable since launch in August 2012; today its clients span seven countries across Europe. The founders have been able to draw on years of experience in the internet and mobile space, and claim that Senscraft is the first and only company to offer an enterprise-class mobile platform for optimising firms’ return on investment in the mobile channel.