Founders: Jonathan Petrides and Alex Petrides
Founded: 2016
Website: www.allplants.com

Allplants is an online, chef-to-customer service dedicated to making plant-based eating simple. Customers can subscribe to six meals at a time for home delivery, and have a choice of 50 recipes, with more launching every month. In the last three years, allplants has served over 1 million dishes nationwide.

Allplants currently has over 45,000 active subscribers, and two thirds of its customers are not vegan – meaning the company’s mission to make plant-based eating accessible and exciting is working. Perhaps that’s because allplants has been backing up its positive messaging with action, by offsetting all of the carbon on its home deliveries to planting trees in Zambia for every referred customer (5,000 and counting).

In three years, allplants has become the number one plant-based brand in the UK, and the largest plant-based kitchen in Europe. Founders Jonathan and Alex Petrides would say that’s a far cry from what started as a supper club at their kitchen table.

Allplants is catering to a rapidly growing market and offering a quality product – a winning combo if we ever saw one.

Founders: Kai Feller and Andrew Michael
Founded: 2015
Website: www.bark.com

Bark.com is an online service marketplace connecting both businesses and consumers to the right professional for their needs. There are currently over 1 million professionals ready to help across 1,000 unique categories, from accountancy services to zumba classes. The process of finding suitable professionals is as simple as a Google search.

Founders Kai Feller and Andrew Michael haven’t pursued any funding from investors. They say their decision to remain self-funded motivates the company to be innovative, creative, and entrepreneurial, a spirit which has carried them far: Bark.com has achieved 471% growth over the last three years, a level that it is looking to maintain over the next few years.

Bark.com is guided by a commitment to empowering small businesses and self-employed workers, and it offers plenty of digital skills training and mentoring to businesses that use the platform. Businesses and professionals on Bark.com receive leads for free, and they then pay a fee to Bark.com if they’d like to get in touch with the customer. The fee charged depends on the potential value of the job.

Bark.com is helping service businesses digitise, a move that’s quickly becoming not just profitable but inevitable. As the internet becomes the first port of call for anyone needing specific help, the appetite for a global, on-demand services platform is rapidly increasing.

Bark.com currently operates in seven other markets aside from the UK, and is committed to expanding even further to non-English speaking markets in the next few years. This company is one to watch, they are all bark, and all bite.

Founders: Andy Shovel and Pete Sharman
Founded: 2019
Website: www.this.co

THIS appears for the first time in the Startups 100 at position 30, offering plant-based food products for meat lovers.

Starting in 2019, founders Andy Shovel and Pete Sharman wanted to create a product that was sustainable and ethically sound without sacrificing taste, texture, usability or nutritional value. After two years of research and development alongside world-leading scientists and flavourists, THIS began.

With a core belief that meat-eaters shouldn’t have to compromise on taste if they want to cut down on meat, THIS’ target market isn’t necessarily vegans, but those looking to cut down on their meat consumption. Today, a third of the UK population falls into this category of ‘meat reducer’, marking a clear market for a business like THIS that can offer a product that effectively mimics the taste and texture of real meat.

Available in restaurants and from several big-name retailers, THIS is quickly making a name for itself on the UK food scene. With a range of eight products so far (focussing on ‘isn’t chicken’ and ‘isn’t bacon’), the brand is looking to expand in the coming years.

One of the questions THIS is always asked is ‘how do you get it to taste so similar to meat?’. Shovel and Sharman make no bones about how difficult this has been – it’s taken nearly two years to perfect their recipes, and they’ve thought of everything, from smell to texture.

At a time when consumers are more discerning, and want products that help them achieve their moral and ethical goals, THIS is tapping into a huge market.

As vegan products become more prominent, recipes and ingredients that replicate the taste and texture of the products being replaced are sure to offer THIS a taste of business success.

Founder: Chris Mole
Founded: 2017
Website: www.molzi.com

Appearing in the Startups 100 for the first time, Molzi is a European Amazon agency whose mission is simply to continuously find and conquer Amazon growth opportunities for brands.

The potential to sell on Amazon is huge, but competition is fierce, and many sellers get left out in the cold (or left to the last page of the product results). Amazon can be a hard platform to use, and even harder to get right. This is where Molzi comes in.

Molzi offers help for the whole ‘Amazon selling experience’ – from set-up and platform integration to product content optimisation and advertising, through to data analytics, strategy and much much more.

With UK headquarters and 60 people working across 15 countries, Molzi is made up of ecommerce experts, digital marketers, graphic designers, writers, data scientists and account managers. Founded by Chris Mole in 2017, this team of experts has grown quickly in just a few years. Molzi’s pricing structure is tailored to each client’s needs, though the brand focuses on a delivery model where, if clients don’t see growth, neither does Molzi.

Working with some of the world’s leading global brands across a huge range of industries, Molzi delivers expertise that helps new and old businesses to tap into a massive-potential market. With ecommerce sales growing, Molzi is primed for yet more success year on year.

Founder: Freddie Blackett
Founded: 2015
Website: www.patchplants.com

The UK is getting greener. Let’s face it – any trendy shop, cafe or office isn’t complete without a plethora of plants. And this trend has headed right into our homes, and the best part – you no longer need a garden to join the green-finger club.

Leading the charge in bringing fresh patches of joy to homes and businesses around the country is Patch, a plant delivery service sourcing its hand-picked greenery directly from the Netherlands. But that’s not all. Patch also provides a personalised plant experience to its customers, offering care guides and dedicated plant doctors who help to diagnose any plant-related issues.

Founder Freddie Blackett found his way onto the Startups 100 Index already, coming in at position 29 in 2018, and Patch is still growing to this day. Combining world class, Dutch flowers with a UK-based customer service consistently scoring over 95% in the CSAT (customer satisfaction score), Patch has all the right components to flourish in the coming years.

Patch also offers a subscription service for B2B clients, (the list includes heavyweights like MADE.com) which includes regular office visits form the Patch team to maintain the plants. However, Plant’s main focus is the B2C customer, otherwise known as anyone who loves plants.

What about the plants themselves? Many of them are exclusive to Patch and come in a variety of different categories, including ‘pet-friendly’ and the most popular: unkillables. With sales continuing to soar, Patch has secured itself as a major player in the plant world, leaving the competition green with envy.

Founder: Kane Halsey
Founded: 2018
Website: www.pickr.works

Contract work is HUGE in the UK. But there’s a problem – finding and hiring contractors is a lengthy and costly process. Kane Halsey, founder of Pickr recognised this issue and has turned to tech to solve it.

In short, Pickr is a workforce optimisation tool. It reduces the average time it takes for a business to hire a contractor from 12 days to just 15 hours. With Pickr, a business could, in theory, advertise and fulfil a role by the next working day.

By cutting out multiple links in the supply chain of contract hiring, companies can tap into Pickr’s digital community of 10k+ verified workers and have a team of specialists assembled quickly and easily. But how does it all work?

Pickr sources the right candidate for the job from its talent cloud by using matching algorithms. The business seeking contractors will then receive real time GPS information of the contractor along with predictive analytics of the worker’s reliability based on past working experiences. This algorithm has helped Pickr reduce the average first-day ‘no-show’ rate from 47% to just 9%.

Pickr operates two revenue models. First, a managed service aimed at large businesses. Here the platform receives project briefs from businesses and Pickr provides labour, project management, and supervision for a fee. Second, Pickr provides a labour resource-only service whereby it allocates contractors with customers and receives a fee for each completed shift.

There were 4075 shifts worked through Pickr last year, and the platform gained almost 9,000 app users since its relaunch in 2019. Pickr has paid out over £1m in wages and commissioned 82,000 working hours on projects nationwide, helping the company reach the final of the ‘Telecoms Project of the Year’ at the National Tech Awards last year.

As you can see, there are plenty of reasons why multiple businesses are picking Pickr, and why we picked them for this year’s Startups 100 index.

Founders: Alessandro Savelli, Finn Lagun and Chris Rennoldson
Founded: 2017
Website: www.pastaevangelists.com

Bringing authentic, artisanal flair from his homeland in Italy, founder Alessandro Savelli started Pasta Evangelists to convert the British public to his religion of handmade pasta-making and ‘Italianita’ (Italianess).

More than just a recipe kit delivery service, Pasta Evangelists aims to elevate the UK’s everyday pasta experience with a weekly changing menu of 10 dishes with pasta varieties from 20 different Italian regions, including the Roman cacio e pepe and Liguria’s trenette al pesto genovese.

Based in East London, the company wants to share the joy of artisanal pasta around the country that is normally only enjoyed in the capital. And the pasta? It’s made using sustainably sourced doppio zero flour from small farmers and local growers Italy, British free-range eggs, and a pinch of salt and water.

On opening the pasta box, customers find handmade pasta, artisanally-made sauces, and recipe cards, which allows them to open a traditional trattoria inside their own kitchen and have restaurant-quality dishes freshly cooked and on the table in under five minutes.

Featured previously on the Startups 100 Index in 2018 at position 95, Pasta Evangelists is showing no signs of slowing down, now with products available from its ecommerce website, in Harrods and Marks and Spencer, on Deliveroo, and as a standard FMCG brand in Ocado and Amazon.

With its evangelical product and ethos, mixed with a continued growth, Pasta Evangelists has become the pasta to buy in the UK. Bellissimo!

Founders: Oliver Montague and Dmitro Khroma
Founded: 2017
Website: www.swytchbike.com

The humble bicycle hasn’t escaped the UK’s growing interest in sustainable electronic vehicles. The team behind Swytch is on a mission to make eBikes a more accessible and eco-friendly technology than ever before!

With their unique product, founders Oliver Montague and Dmitro Khroma have found a way to encourage more people to ditch cars and other vehicles in favour of green electronic cycling.

After identifying that people with eBikes cycle considerably more than the average regular bike owner, they devised the innovative Swytch concept: a bespoke service that allows cyclists to transform whatever bike they own into an eBike.

However, this technology does more than put more “eCyclists” on the road. A Swytch eBike kit takes just 50kg of CO2 to manufacture, meaning that the environmental impact is eight times lower than when an eBike is created brand new.

Swytch raised $500,000 from 1,000 contributors in an impressive crowdfunding effort to bring the patented idea to life. In 2018, the team distributed over 3,000 eBike kits to over 45 countries worldwide. To date, 1 million miles have been ridden by “Swytchers” combined.

With a more sustainable way of life becoming an increasingly urgent requirement for the modern world, it seems Montague and Khroma are contributors to a meaningful cause with this disruptive product – the likes of which will surely only increase in demand.

Founders: Dr Mahiben Maruthappu and Marek Sacha
Founded: 2016
Website: www.ceracare.co.uk

Finding a home carer that perfectly suits the needs of an elderly or vulnerable loved one at short notice would probably feel like a daunting and impossible task. Former NHS advisor and Founder of Cera Care, Dr Mahiben Maruthappu, aims to change this with a concept that offers better support to people needing care, their carers, and their families.

The Cera platform is able to arrange homecare visits within just 24 hours while still taking into account a customer’s exact requirements and preferences. Maruthappu worked with internet entrepreneur and co-founder Marek Sacha to create the digital homecare platform that not only helps families find ideal carers and stay better informed about the wellbeing of their loved one, but also helps carers to work more effectively.

Carers can use the platform to leave digital reports after each homevisit, which authorised family members can be granted access to in real time for full transparency. What’s more, AI technology allows the software to make predictions based on collected data that could help carers foresee health detororations and take better actions for an improved quality of care.

The value that the platform brings to the UK healthcare industry has been recognised numerous times; Cera has received over 25 awards including Outstanding Home Care Provider at the National Home Care Awards. This year, it’s won best Innovative Technology Expertise at the 2020 Home Care Awards.

Cera Care has also been growing fast, and has recently acquired Mears Care to become one of the UK’s largest care firms. With rollouts of the newest version of the platform planned for many more of its branches this year, it seems that the company is showing no signs of slowing down!

Founders: Sophie Adelman and Euan Blair
Founded: 2016
Website: www.whitehat.org

If you want to apply for the very best jobs, it’s something of an unspoken rule that you have to go to university first. For Sophie Adelman and Euan Blair, there’s something seriously wrong with this system – which is why they decided to change it.

According to Adelman and Blair, this entrenched emphasis on university study is harmful to both students or employers. As many will be all too aware, university is not always accessible to young people from under-represented backgrounds.This injustice is what inspires WhiteHat to offer tailored apprenticeships that rival the learning experience at elite universities.

WhiteHat’s fierce and genuine approach to driving change at a societal level is what sets it apart from other mealy-mouthed enterprises. It’s looking to completely redefine the way that employers recruit entry level talent, by changing attitudes towards apprenticeships and addressing the poor representation of individuals from BAME and certain socio-economic backgrounds.

Adelman and Blair’s vision is to make access to the workplace fairer, particularly for those who traditionally face professional barriers. WhiteHat looks to disrupt the apprenticeship landscape in two ways: by developing and offering high quality education and training material, and by giving young people access to a thriving on- and offline community, similar to a peer community you’d expect at university. It partners with world-class content providers and utilises cutting-edge tech to educate young people, match them with ideal roles, and “shape the diverse workplaces of the future”.

With fewer young people looking to go down the university route, and more employers understanding the importance and value of championing diversity, WhiteHat is already leading the charge towards meaningful, positive change in the UK’s professional and social landscape – and shows no signs of breaking stride.