Founders: Suzie Walker
Founded: February 2014
Website: www.primalpantry.com

While working as a nutritionist, Suzie Walker found that although her clients saw good results using the paleo diet, they struggled to find on-the-go snacks that were free of grains, refined sugars, soy, gluten or additives.

She decided to rectify this and in 2014 launched The Primal Pantry: a range of ‘clean eating’ snack bars, made with chopped fruit and nuts, which prides itself on never using bulking agents, flavourings, preservatives or additives.

After promoting the three initial flavours on social media and receiving no less than 20,000 orders within two weeks, Walker knew she was on to something.

Today, the range has expanded to five flavours and three high protein bars, selling through Ocado, Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Holland & Barrett, Planet Organic, and Wholefoods in the UK and through international distributors to 28 countries worldwide. In 2016, The Primal Pantry was a finalist for the Export Business of the Year and Women in Business awards at the Startups Awards.

Backed by just under £1m in investment from two rounds of private funding, the brand has plenty of products in the pipeline for 2017 including a new high protein product, the ‘Cocoa Brownie’.

As it continues to broaden its range, attracting not just paleo-followers and clean eating converts but sports enthusiasts, free-from adopters and healthy snackers, The Primal Pantry is expecting to hit an impressive £6.5m in revenue this year.

Founder: Pip Murray
Founded: June 2013 (Launched January 2015)
Website: www.pipandnut.com

Built on the principle that “health food should never be boring”, Pip & Nut is the all-natural nut butter brand that’s updating one of the nation’s favourite sandwich fillings and snacks.

Startups Awards 2016 Women in Business Award winner Pip Murray had her ‘lightbulb moment’ while training for a marathon. She loved to snack on peanut butter but found the brands available used palm oil – known to be a major source of trans fats – and sugar, while the healthier varieties were uninspiring.

Following a period of intense recipe testing and a crowdfunding campaign that brought in £120,000 in just nine days, Pip & Nut was born, with a mission to provide customers with healthy, uniquely-flavoured nut butter.

Soon enough, Pip & Nut’s coconut and almond butter had won The Grocer New Product Award and went on to represent the UK in the SIAL World Tour Awards in 2016. The start-up’s more recent flavours have also proved popular, with four new taste varieties due to hit shelves in June this year.

With unique flavour and size varieties and an engaging online presence that has amassed over 85,000 social media followers, Murray seems to have hit upon a perfect recipe, with Pip & Nut now sold in over 3,000 stores.

It has also caught the attention of a number of top customers and brands. Its on-the-go 30g ‘squeeze packs’ are popular among fitness fans and have been supplied to Chelsea Football Club, alongside the England and Scotland rugby teams. Its 1kg vats are also supplied to high-profile restaurant chains including LEON and Pret a Manger.

Over the next year, Murray plans to double the business, expanding overseas into the Nordics, the UAE and the Netherlands, with revenue projections in excess of £5.5m. We expect that Murray will continue to see consumers going nuts about her brand over the coming year.

Founder: Dr. Jamie Wilson
Founded: January 2015
Website: www.myhometouch.com

These days, most of the things we need can be found on the web; jobs, used cars, offices, homes and lovers can all be sought out through specialist online platforms. But what about carers?

Disrupting the “outdated” traditional agency model for finding home care, HomeTouch is an innovative platform that matches elderly or disabled people seeking in-home companionship and personal care with vetted, qualified carers.

A doctor specialising in dementia, founder Jamie Wilson would often meet elderly people who needed extra help but wanted to live in their own homes rather than residential care or hospital beds. He recognised that the care system was inefficient and under strain, with carers earning negligible incomes and believe that technology could well be the key to improving this.

And so in 2015 Wilson launched HomeTouch with twin goals of providing a way to find reliable carers easily and efficiently, and also giving carers greater recognition with salaries – according to the business – 75% higher than the average pay a carer receives.

Two years on and HomeTouch has 1,000 customers using its service and recently acquired the UK’s largest database of live carers, with over 25,000 on the platform.

Investors have also taken a shine to the business and it has raised over £1.7m investment from names such as Bupa, Nominet Trust, Passion Capital and 500 Startups.

Over the next 12 months, HomeTouch plans to roll out a live-in care service across the UK and has projected seven figure revenues for the year.

Eventually, HomeTouch aims to become the “UK’s largest online home care service” and we’ll be watching on as it looks to achieve this goal.

Founder: Archie Hewlett
Founded: Duke & Dexter
Website: www.dukeanddexter.com

At just 22 years of age, Archie Hewlett is the youngest entrepreneur in this year’s Startups 100 index, but the story of his premium loafer brand Duke & Dexter is also one of the most inspirational.

At the age of 18, Hewlett rejected his place at Durham University and a job in property recruitment to follow his footwear fantasy.

A fan of velvet slippers, Hewlett’s business idea was to produce high quality slip-on shoes for men without the inflated price tag or pretentious associations.

Admitting he “had absolutely no experience in fashion or starting a business”, Hewlett borrowed £9,000 from the bank of Mum and Dad and dedicated “22 hours a day” to make sure his new start-up could get its foot in the door of an incredibly competitive market.

Handmade in the UK, his brand Duke & Dexter produces a range of slip-on loafers in leather, motif, tweed and pyramid. The designs are original and materials are sourced from over 25 countries.

Since launch in 2014, Duke & Dexter has opened its first physical store in Covent Garden and counts Harrods, Selfridges, Liberty and Fenwick as stockists.

With 50,000 clients worldwide, you can also see Duke & Dexter shoes on famous feet including Ryan Reynolds, Jonah Hill and Justin Timberlake.

Actor Eddie Redmayne even wore a pair of the shoes when collecting his Oscar at the 2015 Academy Awards; showcasing the brand to millions worldwide.

Now shipping to 100 countries worldwide, with projected turnover of over £3m for 2017, Hewlett has his sights set on opening a store in New York in the coming months. Start-ups should look to follow in Duke & Dexter’s footsteps!

CEO: Asher Ismail
Founded: June 2013 (launched July 2014)
Website: www.midrive.com

According to government statistics, 55% of people who learnt to drive last year failed their first test, with most spending an eye-watering £1,000 or more on lessons; each.

With this in mind, it’s clear that the current system is crying out for disruption. Fortunately, tech start-up miDrive is busy doing just that.

Founded by Simon Hagger with Asher Ismail now CEO, miDrive’s learn-to-drive service has given an old system a modern update to give learner-drivers a modern alternative to the main players in the space.

Enabling learners to manage their driving education via their smartphones, miDrive emails users detailed post-lesson progress reports, offers them the capacity to digitally book and pay for their lessons – which are competitively priced – and has released a series of educational driving apps.

Furthermore, by hosting the UK’s largest online marketplace of 1,200 independent instructors, miDrive allows learners to seek out teachers who are right for them.

To date, the start-up has attracted £5m finance from investors including Holiday Extras and Initial Capital, an amount which has helped the business to accelerate at a rapid rate.

Over 300,000 people have successfully learnt to drive through miDrive in the three years since its launch, proof of its effectiveness and usability,

Now available in 100 cities and towns across the UK, miDrive is currently expanding the service to one new location per week so that more aspiring drivers can benefit from its offering.

Founders: Nicholas Bransby-Williams, Antony Pink, Dominic Perks and Edward Relf
Founded: April 2014 (Launched January 2015)
Website: www.laundrapp.com

For a start-up to retain its ranking among the top 20 businesses in our Startups 100 index for two consecutive years is an impressive feat and an accolade which Laundrapp, alongside its App of the Year Startups Awards win, can now boast.

Originally launched as a service to fulfill your laundry and dry cleaning needs, from just £2 an item, with a tap of a smartphone, Laundrapp’s on-demand offering now extends to ironing and linen rental for Airbnb hosts. What’s more, you can now use the app in more than 100 towns and cities across the UK.

Constantly developing and innovating its service, the app now incorporates all of the latest in smart technology: you can order for your laundry to be collected using its voice-activated service via Alexa and app users can also benefit from real-time driver tracking.

Since featuring in our 2016 index, Laundrapp – whose founding team includes former Mind Candy CTO Ed Relf – has raised £5m funding to take total investment to an eye-watering £10m and has launched its service in Australia and New Zealand.

Further expansion is also on the cards with plans to roll-out the app in 10 new markets over the next 18 months.

Relf says that over the last year “the business has exploded” and we’re inclined to agree particularly when you look at the business’ customer portfolio; corporate customers include Virgin, Marks & Spencer and Lloyds Banking Group.

According to Laundrapp, studies show that consumers spend an average of 10 hours a month on sorting, washing and ironing clothes and, as time-poor Brits seek out solutions to free-up their days, we’re confident that Laundrapp will continue to clean up in 2017.

Founders: Kathryn Tyler and Nikki Cochrane
Founded: October 2013 ( May 2014)
Website: www.digitalmums.com

Did you know that there are over two million unemployed mothers in the UK? Did you also know that 70% of stay-at-home mums would return to work if given more flexible options?

While maternal unemployment is rarely discussed, it’s a significant problem blighting the UK economy. Coupled with the worsening digital skills gap, it’s no wonder that critics are gloomy over the UK’s economic future.

Enter Digital Mums.

Having run a marketing agency in Hackney, business partners Kathryn Tyler and Nikki Cochrane were overwhelmed by demand from small businesses who needed help with social media.

After reading a number of reports on how women were disproportionately affected by unemployment in comparison to men, the duo joined the dots and realised that mums with flexible hours – given the right social media skills – would be a perfect match for firms looking to get to grips with online marketing.

Launched in October 2014, Digital Mums delivers 100% online digital and social media training courses to mums of all experiences and abilities.

The business’ second entry in the esteemed Startups 100, moving 43 places up the list, it seeks to empower and upskill mums so they can return to work as soon as possible.

It offers two main courses including a ‘social media management course’ designed for women from all career backgrounds, while its ‘social media marketing associate​ programme’ is designed for those from more of a communication background.

Having grown 600% in the last three years with a team of 35, Digital Mums has upskilled over 700 mums since inception and now trains 104 mums a month.

If the business continues to scale at this rate we’ll see 1,250 new jobs created each year; an achievement which merits recognition.

Founder: Scott Parsons and Roheel Ahmad
Founded: January 2015
Website: www.forsythbarnes.com

Billed as “the right people to find the right people”, entrepreneurs Scott Parsons and Roheel Ahmad have built a mini-recruitment empire in the space of just two and a half years.

Founding Forsyth Barnes in January 2015, their executive appointments consultancy seeks to put employee engagement at the centre of everything it does.

Admitting the industry as a whole has a somewhat “unfortunate” reputation with a large degree of scepticism attached to it, the duo’s goal is to bring back the relationship aspect to the recruitment process.

Targeting executives who can command salaries of up to £250,000, Forsyth Barnes offers clients both a retained and contingent model – with the former attaching a fee for both the search and placement of a candidate, while the latter allows for a fee only once the candidate is placed.

Working with over 118 high profile clients at present, its customers range from tech start-ups to larger financial services and renowned retailers.

Originally London-based, 2017 has seen the business expand and open a second office in Parsons’ native city of Nottingham. Across both bases, the start-up now has a total of 21 employees, with plans to increase this number to over 30 by the end of 2017.

Achieving 100% year-on-year growth, Forsyth Barnes turned over £2m for 2016 – with this number expected to topple the £4m mark for the end of 2017.

Already discussing a bigger move for their Nottingham branch in the coming year, Ahmad and Parsons are eyeing up international expansion in the years ahead and, while recruitment is a highly competitive industry, Forsyth Barnes shows signs of real staying power.

Founder: Marcus Thornley
Founded: March 2014
Website: www.play-consult.co.uk

Have you ever looked up from your phone to find you’ve spent the last two hours aligning virtual pieces of candy? Or maybe you’ve woken up in the middle of the night to mine pretend gold in a digital village?

Recognising the power that games have to make people do such things, former Electronic Arts executive Marcus Thornley founded Play Consulting with a goal of creating ‘gamified’ digital products which would encourage good decisions and positive behaviours.

In partnership with Bupa, Play launched its first product Boost – an app for businesses on which employees can set and complete wellness activities to foster beneficial habits – in January 2015. It later won the LaingBuisson Innovation in Tech Award for 2016.

In light of Boost’s success, Thornley realised Play – a finalist at the 2016 Startups Awards – had great scope to “seed start-up culture into big businesses, change how corporates think about their employees and how they execute it”. So in May 2016 Play launched Totem, its own employee engagement platform for businesses.

Totem has attracted a number of high profile clients including Bupa Care Homes, Pizza Hut, PwC and Leeds Building Society and has a Seal of Excellence from the European Commission.

Having scaled from a team of two to a team of 22, Play Consulting is already profitable despite starting with a mere £25 with no external investment raised.

Play Consulting has lofty ambitions to create games that drive “team autonomy, business success and individual happiness” across organisations. With a huge potential market and new rollouts on the horizon, Play is in prime position to achieve this. As Thornley assures us; “this is only the beginning”.

Founders: Jon Hulme and John Burke
Founded: January 2015
Website: www.craft-clubs.co.uk

With the number of craft breweries and distillers growing around the UK and abroad, Jon Hulme and John Burke saw an opportunity to help home drinkers discover all the exciting artisanal beverages they could otherwise miss.

And so they launched Startups 100 2016-featured Craft Gin Club; a subscription service that sends its customers a surprise box containing a variety of gins, mixers, cocktail ingredients and food items to compliment their drinks selection each month.

In May last year, the drinks entrepreneurs branched out into sparkling wine with the launch of Bubble Club – bringing both arms of the business under the Craft Clubs brand.

The pair decided to use their experience of content marketing, storytelling and social media interaction to build a base of loyal customers and generate that all-important recurring revenue.

Craft Clubs also allows its members to make one off purchases of gift memberships and exclusive seasonal products and sells marketing packages partner companies so they can access its audience.

In just over two years, the business has secured 17,000 active club members and a staggering 300,000 Facebook fans.

Dragons’ Den star and Plusnet Pioneer Sarah Willingham is also a fan. In July last year, Craft Clubs had a successful appearance on Dragons’ Den and secured £75,000 from Willingham in exchange for a 15% equity share.

Next up, Hulme and Burke plan to focus on growing Bubble Club throughout 2017, as well as the development of its marketing platform for brand partners.

Craft Clubs is looking at a £7.5m turnover for 2017 – bottom’s up to them!