Founder: Philippe Gelis
Founded: June 2011
Website: www.kantox.com

When trading internationally, exchanging foreign currency is often cited as one of the major drawbacks. With commissions, fees and mark-ups spread throughout the process, it represents a major cost which many feel is unjust. Step up Kantox; the online currency exchange platform allows businesses to trade currencies directly with each other at rates they agree on, promoting greater transparency and avoiding the hidden fees and costs associated with third-party exchange brokers.

Alongside our other FX entries this year, the easy-to-use platform represents a real challenge to the hegemony of traditional foreign currency exchange; more than 500 business clients now use Kantox, ranging from small and medium-sized firms to mid-cap clients with revenues in excess of £1bn. In February, the start-up raised €6.5m Series A funding from a group of leading European investors, adding to a €1m seed investment raised in July 2012. Founder Philippe Gelis says the funding will be used to expand Kantox’s European presence on its way to processing a targeted €1bn of transactions by the end of the year.

Founders: Jay Radia and Meelan Radia
Founded: March 2012
Website: www.yieldify.com

Having worked in the online marketing industry for nine years, brothers Jay Radia and Meelan Radia found that “one of the most painful experiences” was driving traffic to a website and it not converting. Determined to resolve the problem, the duo developed an e-commerce software solution that would help businesses maximise opt-in rates and revenue from visitors leaving your site; Yieldify. Launched in March 2012, the London-based software start-up has created an algorithm learning engine which optimises the interactive message (overlay) displayed to the user when leaving a website, tracking the visitor’s mouse movements, speed and behaviour.

It’s this sophisticated data-driven technology which has seen it scale rapidly over the last two years to 600 plus clients across the UK, Europe, and the US, including O2, Phillips and Play.com. With a team of 50 employees, the company’s financials match its impressive growth; with an extremely impressive turnover predicted for 2014. Inspired by an attitude to “find something you love, and do it better than everyone else”, Yieldify is looking to build on its overseas reach with further expansion planned in the US and Asia.

Founder: Jonathan Mackey
Founded: September 2010 (launched June 2011)
Website: www.gogroopie.com

A daily deals site is certainly not a new concept, in fact, it’s a pretty congested marketplace to attempt to enter, but the founder of start-up GoGroopie was determined he could offer something new. With a business model that is “operationally unique”, the brand has seen rapid growth since launching in June 2011, and now works with a huge range of partners to deliver goods to consumers.

Unlike a lot of their competitors, GoGroopie has grown organically – avoiding the well-documented rise and fall of lots of volume-based discount marketplaces. With no external funding, the company has had to focus on a long-term business model, which has enabled steady development and a continual upward growth trajectory. In the next 12 months, the team are focused on their ambitious long-term mission to become “the UK’s most customer-focused discount marketplace”, with plans to invest in technology to enhance the website’s usability as well as turning their attention to mobile marketing and applications.

Founder: Jo Jenners
Founded: January 2011
Website: www.3blondebears.co.uk

Jo Jenners’ high-end personalised gifts retailer is now part of a select group of start-ups to make our list for the third time running following another successful year. The company has been able to ramp up its production since moving to a new 1,200 square foot warehouse, with its hand-designed ceramics, aprons and more continuing to grow in popularity. The company generated revenues of £642,000 last year, turning a healthy profit in the process, and expects to grow this to £801,000 in 2014 – extremely impressive for a business grown from just £5,000 of savings.

Well-heeled ABC female customers continue to serve as its key demographic, with ‘empty nester’ buyers developing into another strong market and a new ‘corporate arm’ gaining solid traction. To continue its strong growth trajectory, the brand has undergone a recruitment drive to hire some key management and technical members of the team. All the signs point to another strong year for 3 Blonde Bears; with the business moving ever closer to achieving Jenners’ mission to offer “the fastest turnaround of high quality, stylish, personalised gifts in the UK.”

Founder: Dominic Clarke
Founded: May 2011
Website: www.tyresonthedrive.com

Coming in at number 24 on our 2013 list, former Michelin Tyres employee Dom Clarke’s start-up Tyresonthedrive has continued to shake up the tyre fitting industry with its unique model, which uses a technology-driven method to constantly source the cheapest replacement tyres for its customers. It is an offering that clearly works for customers, who save significantly on the cost of replacement tyres, and Tyresonthedrive itself – by only ordering what it needs and never keeping spare tyres in stock, overheads are drastically reduced. 30,000 people have used the service so far and it seems to be a hit with users, the business is ranked 1^st on Trust Pilot in the tyre category with over 4,000 reviews.

Revenues are also strong, in 2013 turnover reached £2.9m, with this figure expected to grow to £6m in 2014. The Digital Business of the Year finalist has big plans to partner up with a national retailer in the next 12 months, bringing its low prices and commitment to customer service to as many customers as possible.

Founders: Piers Ridyard and Steven Levy
Founded: March 2012
Website: www.theniftyminidrive.com

When a hitherto-unknown company lists a new product on Kickstarter with a target of $11,000 and ends up raising $384,319 from almost 10,000 backers, it’s fair to say they are on to something. Founder Piers Ridyard came up with the idea of Nifty’s flagship Minidrive when looking for an external storage device for his Macbook that did not compromise on portability or Apple’s famed minimalist design principles.

The colourful, attractively designed device can add up to 128GB of extra space to Apple devices by slotting seamlessly into the SD card port and turning traditional notions of bulky, ugly exterior drives on their head. With 17 global distributors and 35,000 customers already (9,805 of these were generated through Minidrive’s successful Kickstarter campaign), Ridyard and co-founder Steven Levy expect the profitable company to turn over £1m this year, launch a new product and possibly seek a second round of funding; the Minidrive may be small, but it is clear Nifty has hit upon something big.

Founder: Gideon Lask
Founded: July 2011 (launched October 2011)
Website: www.buyapowa.com

A social media explosion over the past few years has, inevitably, led to a deluge of companies attempting to capitalise on the vast marketing potential it offers. Many of them ambitiously claim to push business’ marketing spend to the very limits of its potential, with little to back up these assertions – but having amassed a star-studded client list including Tesco, Pfizer, Sony and Timewarner since launching in 2011, it’s clear that Buyapowa’s offering is more than just the usual hubris.

Rather than focusing on one social media outlet, Buyapowa allows brands, retailers and publishers to create multi-channel social shopping campaigns across multiple devices through a system known as ‘co-buying’. Under Buyapowa’s unique system, the consumers themselves decide what they want to buy through ‘Kickstarter-style’ group buying campaigns, in which groups commit to buy an item in order to drive its price down. The system also promotes ‘gamification’ of e-commerce, incentivising shoppers to bring more friends in through rewards systems. With over 80 clients signed up so far, founder Gideon Lask plans to build on recent business wins in Brazil and the USA by taking the business truly international.

Founders: Jonathan Brown, Ian Oxley and James Blackburn
Founded: August 2012
Website: www.gpslocums.co.uk

GPS Locums made our list last year in recognition of the potential of its proposition, which matches NHS hospitals with locum (temporary) medical staff from junior to senior level, all vetted and 100% compliant. The business continues to do well in a congested market, with a current run rate of £2.2m; the founders claim this is down to GPS Locums’ core ethos of treating its doctors as individuals, rather than just another number in the market. With founders Jonathan Brown and James Blackburn’s extensive recruitment experience and Ian Oxley’s experience in finance, the trio knew that strong relationships would be an integral part of the business’ success.

This growth becomes yet more impressive when you take on board the fact that GPS Locums has been entirely self-funded so far and is generating an extremely healthy profit. Now with Tier 1 contracts throughout the UK for the supply of locum doctors, GPS Locums’ founders have ambitious plans to double the firm’s growth over the next 12 months, increasing revenues to more than £4m and hiring several new staff in the process.

Founders: Gary Bassett, Sharon Bassett, Kevin Key, Caroline Key, Alister Ramm and Lorna Ramm
Founded: November 2011
Website: www.a-starsports.co.uk

Now completing its hat-trick of appearances in Startups 100, children’s sport franchise A-Star Sports continues to go from strength to strength. Since achieving British Franchise Association accreditation last year, the franchise has grown to encompass six territories operated by the four directors and 10 additional territories with nine separate franchise owners. The franchise’s after-school sports classes continue to perform strongly, catering for more than 4,000 children per week, and its newly-launched party and holiday club ventures have also seen significant growth; A-Star Sports holiday clubs cater for around 200 children per day during the school holidays, and the founders plan to increase the number of parties held across 2014 from 550 to 1,000.

A-Star Sports’ growth has attracted numerous industry accolades, including selection as an inaugural member of Lord Young’s ACCELERATE 250 initiative, a listing in the Small Business Saturday 100 and a finalist appearance in two categories of the Franchise Marketing Awards – to name just a few. The founders have set an ambitious target of 24 franchises in 2014 and will continue to build on A-Star Sports’ charity and social enterprise links.

Founders: Christoph Rieche and James Dear
Founded: October 2011
Website: www.iwoca.co.uk

Since making our list in 2013, the small firm-focused e-commerce loans provider has gone from strength to strength. iwoca recognises the difficulty e-commerce retailers have in obtaining traditional finance without concrete assets to secure finance against, uniquely offering loans based on metrics such as sales performance and customer feedback. Exceeding its revenue projections from last year, the business has taken on approximately 9,000 new customers since March 2012, and this is only set to continue as the number and variety of e-commerce firms continues to proliferate.

iwoca marked a major milestone when it closed a £5m funding round recently with the finance set to fuel a period of unprecedented growth for the business. The founders have ambitious plans to lend to an additional 5,000 small businesses in the UK as well as undertaking a period of aggressive European expansion. Having already launched in Poland, the founders say this is “just the beginning” as they plan to continue to capitalise on an industry that sees year-on-year double digit growth.