Founders: Nelson Sivalingam
Founded: June 2015
Website: www.learnhownow.com

This is not Nelson Sivalingam’s first appearance in the Startups 100 having made his debut on the index in 2016 with lifestyle subscription service Wonderush. Now he returns to the prestigious ranking having pivoted Wonderush to become digital learning platform HowNow.

The platform has developed its service – and still connects you to experts – but now relies more on video to connect you to tutors, teachers and specialists across the world.

HowNow’s proposition is a simple one; if you want to know or learn how to do something, you can do it now over video chat. Be it guitar, yoga, photography or Swahili lessons, learners can engage in one-on-one or group interactive video lessons with over 500 experts in 33 countries.

HowNow takes a commission fee on every booking, with teachers enabled to automate scheduling, receive bookings, take payments and convert their website into an online school with a special widget. Over 10,000 minutes of learning have already taken place on the platform; an incredible feat considering the logistics of accommodating users from different countries, time zones, currencies and languages.

Having closed £1.2m in funding just last month, the next year will see HowNow expand its network of experts and develop new products to make teaching and learning more effective. The platform is also set to go live with a smart augmented learning product very soon.

Sivalingam firmly believes that “overheads and geography should not be barriers to teaching and learning” in the internet era, and is on a mission to empower “everyone to learn anything from anywhere”. Startups Towers is off to try out beginners ukulele classes as we speak…

Founders: Ofri Ben Porat and Nadav Israel
Founded: January 2015 (launched December 2016)
Website: www.pixoneye.com

When we judge entries for the Startups 100, one of the key criteria we look for – alongside an innovative proposition – is an incredible founder/founding team and you’d struggle to find more incredible start-up founders than Pixoneye’s Ofri Ben Porat and Nadav Israel.

Israel was former head of computer vision at Samsung and wrote the facial recognition technology that lies on every Samsung Galaxy phone in the world while Ben Porat acted as senior marketing advisor to the minister of tourism in Israel.

Together, the pair have created pioneering technology start-up Pixoneye – the only company in the world with the capabilities to analyse the untapped resource of an app user’s mobile photo gallery.

Based in London with a presence in Tel Aviv, Pixoneye analyses these mobile photo galleries to create a customer profile by teaching the customer’s smart phone to condense its photo gallery into a feature vector. This can then be shared with brands to improve their ad-targeting.

For instance, using Pixoneye brands can begin to start targeting customers based on patterns that start occuring in their photo galleries such as going on holiday or moving into a new home.

While the founders acknowledge that achieving commercialisation has, and will be, a challenge – “the concept is so new and on the border of what is currently socially accepted in terms of privacy that companies have to decide between the great added value reward vs the perceived reputational ‘risk’ “- interest in Pixoneye is growing.

Currently, the 18-strong business has Israel’s largest publisher Ynet on board and Ben Porat and Israel tell us they have “multiple others lined up” including an international bank, a marketplace app and a “very well known” e-commerce platform.

When it comes to ultimate ambition, the duo have BIG plans: “We want to challenge the duopoly of Facebook and Google.”

Founder: Melanie Hinchcliffe
Founded: July 2014
Website: www.sourcefurniture.co.uk

Having worked in the furniture industry for 12 years, qualified interior architect Melanie Hinchcliffe was well placed to identify its shortcomings and do something about them.

She saw a gap in the market for a more design-led supplier and in 2014 founded Source Furniture – a contract furniture supplier that works closely with the London and international architecture and interior design community.

The business designs, manufactures and supplies furniture to the hospitality industry – as well as assembling and installing pieces for customers. Its client base already includes over 60 hotels, restaurants, bars, and golf clubs in the UK and Europe. High profile client wins have included the Yotel club lounge at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and kitting out the public areas of Hilton Kingston hotel – its largest project to date.

Undergoing a major rebrand, Source will look to secure more international projects over the next year, as well as boost its sales turnover and form relationships with new designers and architects.

In the next six months, it hopes to develop its own range of innovative furniture products and other unique finishes aimed at the hotel industry. Peopled by a small team of qualified interior designers with 20 years’ combined experience in the hospitality design industry, Source’s personal, design-led approach is sure to see it become the go-to name for on-trend furniture solutions.

Founders: Joel Jeffery and Molly Goddard
Launched: September 2014
Website: www.desmondanddempsey.com

Becoming famous for its bold prints and premium cotton, Desmond & Dempsey is a new luxury sleepwear brand retailing in top tier stockists to over 2,500 repeat customers across the UK, USA and Europe.

A truly international brand, Desmond & Dempsey’s founders come from opposite ends of the globe. London native Joel Jeffery and Australian Molly Goddard met in Canada, and in the time they were able to spend together Goddard developed a penchant for lounging around in Jeffery’s shirts – though she would often spill drinks and jam down them.

Keen to find Goddard something of her own (and save Jeffery’s shirts from her breakfast spillage), the duo set out to create their own fashionable, unique nightwear range. Made of luxury cotton and sporting distinctive prints including tigers, pineapples and safari scenes – put together by an in-house artist and graphic designer, their business, Desmond & Dempsey, has achieved this goal in style.

The start-up’s big breakthrough came within just two months of its launch, when it was featured in Vogue magazine which was followed by press clippings in several other high-profile press outlets.

On the back of this media attention, top retailers reached out to the duo and the momentum went from there, helping the business to scale.

Now, selling directly online and through luxury retail giants including Selfridges, Fortnum & Mason, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, Desmond & Dempsey’s customer base of style-conscious sleepers is growing by a staggering 250% year-on-year.

With this rapid growth in mind, we believe the business’ goal of becoming “the sleepwear company” is well within reach.

Founders: Charlie and Harry Thuillier
Launched: October 2014
Website: www.oppoicecream.co.uk

Everyone loves ice cream; we all know it’s a delicious treat but also know that it’s by no means a healthy one.

So what if we told you that ice cream could indeed be ‘healthy’, and could have the same amount of calories as an apple?

Well we have good news as Oppo has created this very concept; all-natural ice cream with 60% less calories and sugar than standard ice cream.

Founding brothers Charlie and Harry Thuillier came up with the idea while on a kite buggy trip along the Brazilian coastline. Living off the indulgent but nutritious food of the land, the brothers wondered why other decadent treats – like ice cream – couldn’t also be guilt-free.

Despite being told by numerous industry professionals that it couldn’t be done, the pair persevered and their determination paid off. 25 months on from idea-stage, the duo hit upon a winning recipe of fresh milk, virgin coconut oil and stevia leaf. This combination would later launch straight into Waitrose and Ocado as the only UK dairy ice cream with an EU Authorised Health Claim.

Having broken crowdfunding records in 2015, Oppo’s biggest breakthrough came in February 2016 when it completed its second crowdfunding round, with investors including Andy Murray, and appeared on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den in the space of one week. Within these fateful seven days, the business’ sales tripled.

Oppo is now stocked in over 1,600 UK stores including Co-Op, Holland and Barrett and Budgens, and is also distributed through national caterers and wholesalers. The business continues to scale rapidly: between 2015 and 2016 it achieved 700% year-on-year growth, and grew 250% from 2016 to 2017.

In the 12 months ahead, Oppo plans to increase its rate of sale and is currently expanding overseas; you can find it on the shelves of 180 Supervalu stores in Ireland.

Founder: Ishaan Malhi
Founded: February 2015 (launched December 2015)
Website: www.trussle.com

Traditional mortgage brokers ask a lot from aspiring homeowners: hours of their time, mountains of paperwork and average fees of £500.

Online mortgage broker Trussle aims to cut all of this out, helping people get the right mortgage without stress and additional expense.

Created by former mortgages and real estate analyst Ishaan Malhi, Trussle’s online profile takes no more than 10 minutes to complete, and the platform enables borrowers to view the status of their application 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With a replica of a lender’s affordability calculator, the platform also enables users to work out the maximum amount they can borrow without trudging to the bank.

Furthermore, Trussle’s continuous monitoring service constantly compares customers’ existing mortgages with over 11,000 deals from 90 lenders, notifying users when it makes sense to swap to a more suitable deal.

In September 2016, Trussle launched a partnership with property marketplace Zoopla, encouraging customers to find and finance a home in “one seamless online journey”. Driving over £5m worth of mortgage enquiries per day, the partnership led to Trussle being shortlisted for the Innovation in Personal Finance Award at the 2017 Moneyfacts Awards.

Thanks to its simple and refreshing approach, Trussle is now handling over £1bn worth of mortgages on behalf of thousands of UK customers, and has attracted £5.6m investment to date from the likes of Zoopla, LocalGlobe, Betfair founder Ed Wray and founder of Songkick Ian Hogarth.

The next 12 months promise big developments for Trussle, with plans to increase mortgage transactions from 0.3 million to two million per year, develop its integration with Zoopla and launch new partnerships with firms including uSwitch and Noddle. All of this will help Trussle continue to bring its vision of a nation of people “controlling their own futures” to life.

Founders: Christopher Moon, and Aaron Evans-Aghoghogbe
Founded: November 2015 (launched January 2016)
Website: www.jointhetribe.travel

Ever tried to book a great group party holiday with your friends?

You’ll know there’s always that one person in the group that gets lumbered with being the ‘holiday organiser’; tasked with finding a good hotel, booking and paying for said hotel alongside flights (and often waiting weeks or months to get paid back what’s owed),  and also expected to create a holiday itinerary of the best places to go.

Well, if you’re in the 18-30 age bracket then you’re in luck as Tribe (formerly Together Travel) is the creator of an all-encompassing solution that says goodbye to the days of organising a party holiday yourself – instead the start-up does it all for you so you can have “a memorable, immersive holiday”.

Disappointed by holidays organised in Ibiza, the founders set about creating a new company that would deliver “only the most immersive holidays”. The founders felt the biggest pain point in the market was that for most first time trips to a chosen location the travellers only normally figure out the best way to “live the location” by the time they leave. 

Launched in January 2016, Tribe’s holiday products read like a map of top party destinations featuring holidays to the likes of Ibiza, Croatia, Las Vegas and Mallorca. Over the next three years, it plans to offer Tribe experiences in every desirable global youth location from weekend breaks to Berlin to four week trips to Australia. 

Tribe handpicks the best hotels and experiences and then hand over the custom build of the trip to their club members, letting travellers choose flight, accommodation, party and local experience options to suit their individual tastes.

However, the business’ biggest selling point is its innovative online booking system. Unlike traditional booking processes, it enables every member of a group to book and pay on an individual basis; removing the need for one person to pay for the entire group upfront.

Having attracted over 7,000 customers and achieved solid six-figure revenue for 2016, Tribe is projecting eight-figure turnover for 2017 and expects to grow rapidly year-on-year. An app is also in development, launching in September 2017, to put its offers and insider access behind a gated membership for 18-30s.

By 2020, the start-up expects to have achieved £20m in revenue – watch this space!

Founders: James Street and Neil Waller
Founded: March 2016
Website: whalar.com

Influencer marketing is fast-becoming the ultimate growth hack for businesses but connecting with influencers and convincing them to share high-quality, relevant posts to engage a target audience isn’t easy.

This is where Whalar comes in.

An official marketing partner of Instagram and Facebook, London-based Whalar makes the process of connecting brands to content creators with influence on Instagram a “whole lot easier”.

Backed by Sir John Hegarty, one of the most respected names in the advertising space, Whalar is essentially a matchmaking service for brands and online influencers. It has built a search algorithm which enables it to identify the best influencers to work with a brand – much like a dating site would match two people with similar interests and personalities.

The platform enables brands to collaborate with thousands of influencers at the same time to produce unique user-generated content and it then measures the results of every campaign, which are shared with the brand.

As the brainchild of James Street and Neil Waller, the Young Guns who founded Startups 100-listed travel site MyDestination.com, Whalar has all the ingredients for start-up success.

Combined with experienced founders and a team of 15 staff, the business has attracted big-name clients such as Pepsi, Warner Bros, and former Startups 100 alumni Deliveroo and PROPERCORN, and is now looking at international expansion with office launches in America proposed for later this year. A Series A funding round is in the pipeline to support these plans.

As their second business to gain a Startups 100 ranking, could a third Startups 100 business be on the cards for Street and Waller? Possibly! – The pair reveal that as “serious entrepreneurs, eventually we would like to hand over the reigns. The fun for us is in starting and executing the vision”.

Founders: Clara Vaisse and Mehdi Meghzifene
Founded: August 2014 (launched February 2015)
Website: www.sibberi.com

If you aren’t yet familiar with Sibberi then get reading as it’s a business bucking a new drinks trend which is becoming the fast-favourite among top models and health and fitness fans.

Sibberi’s USP? It has created a drinks brand made exclusively from tree sap, often known as ‘birch sap’, which is all natural, hydrating, low in calories and has four times less sugar than its health drink rival coconut water.

Made using sap from birch, maple and bamboo trees, Sibberi was created by founder Clara Vaisse and Mehdi Meghzifene after they tried sap in Eastern Europe – where drinking sap is traditional – and decided to bring the taste to the UK.

While they were aware that models overseas were drinking birch sap because they believed it could aid weight loss, Vaisse and Meghzifene couldn’t have prepared for the demand they received for Sibberi when it launched in the UK in February 2015.

As the first in its category, the drink has pulled in stock listings from over 1,000 stores including Boots and Waitrose and has even attracted the attention of Sir Richard Branson; selected as a finalist at VOOM 2016 where Meghzifene pitched to the Virgin mogul.

With four members of staff, Sibberi also employs 20 brand ambassadors to spread the word and it’s a marketing tactic which is working. Already, the business has received coverage from a number of top press outlets including The Guardian, The Grocer, and now Startups.co.uk!

Intent on becoming “the new Innocent Drinks”, Sibberi has a busy few months ahead of it as it looks to leverage the trend it has created. Key targets include exporting to key markets such as France and America, introducing new bottle variations, and investing in marketing.

We’re told the alternative water market will reach $5.4bn by 2020 and we suspect Sibberi will be taking a good part of this share in no time!

Founders: Dr. Mahiben Maruthappu and Marek Sacha
Founded: November 2015
Website: www.joincera.com

Cera wants to address the challenges of social care in Britain. A mission which, on the face of it, seems overtly ambitious but not when you take into account that its co-founder is a doctor, former NHS advisor and creator of the NHS Innovation Accelerator with 100 research publications and 50 awards to his name.

This co-founder is 29 year-old Dr Mahiben Maruthappu and he, alongside co-founder Marek Sacha – an internet entrepreneur who created Rohlik.cz – has built digital homecare plaform Cera.

Providing high-quality care for those in need of support including, but not restricted to, those with Dementia, Parkinson’s Disease, learning difficulties, cancer, and the elderly, Cera’s platform connects those in need of care and their families to their ideal carer.

Based on specific requirements such as specialisms, experience, training and interests, the platform – which runs background checks on all of its carers – then sends a curated shortlist of carers to choose from.

Entirely tech-integrated, the platform also allows for carers to enter a digital record after each home visit, supporting monitoring and evaluation, and these reports can be sent to authorised approved family members and health practicitioners in real-time.

CQC registered, London-based Cera has already formed partnerships with several NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and hospitals throughout the capital and plans to “deepen and develop” its current partnerships with NHS bodies over the coming year.

Highlighting research that shows over 500,000 older people are abused by carers every day while 40% of patients in care homes experience depressions, Maruthappu is passionate that Cera acts a tool to “support our loved ones in the way they deserve”.

With expansion outside of London and new tech developments on the cards, let’s hope Cera helps to change those statistics.