• Winner and runner up of the Santander X Entrepreneurship Awards 2021 unveiled
• Sojo from King's College London wins top prize of £50,000 of seed funding and £25,000 worth of additional business support. Runner-up Deploy, from Imperial College London, wins £25,000 of seed funding and £25,000 worth of additional business support.
The potential business success stories of tomorrow have been unveiled at the Santander X Entrepreneurship Awards 2021, a prestigious UK-wide entrepreneurial business pitching competition for students and recent graduates.
Sojo, which is working to make the fashion industry circular by making clothing alterations and repairs mainstream, from King’s College London, has won the top prize of £50,000 of seed funding and £25,000 worth of additional business support.
Runner-up Deploy, which provides game-changing innovation in water management, from Imperial College London, receives £25,000 of seed funding and £25,000 worth of additional business support.
The winner and runner-up were selected from over 80 early stage start-ups from across the UK. All of them pitched their business ideas across quarter and semi-final heats and were whittled down to five finalists. The shortlist of five finalists then pitched their business ideas to a panel of esteemed judges at the event held at Wembley Stadium in London.
Alongside William Vereker, Chair, Santander UK, judges also included: Olympic Champion and entrepreneur, Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill; Yvonne Bajela, renowned entrepreneur and Founding Member and Principal of Impact X Capital Partners, a UK based venture capital firm investing in underrepresented entrepreneurs; Oliver Kent-Braham, co-founder of Marshmallow, a digital car insurance company, as well as a live and a virtual audience. The event was hosted by Seema Jaswal, professional sports host and journalist.
At the event, which hosted student and graduate entrepreneurs from across the country, William Vereker, Santander UK’s Chair, stressed the importance of supporting entrepreneurial talent and said: “At Santander we’re passionate about supporting entrepreneurship, particularly amongst young people, and even more so during an exceptionally tough time for many start-ups and small businesses. We were truly impressed by the commitment, talent and creative thinking presented this year and it’s fantastic to support the future generation of business leaders. Many congratulations to both the winning business Sojo and the runner-up business Deploy – we’re delighted you’ll receive funding and support to enable your businesses to scale. We look forward to seeing your businesses continue to grow and help create a more sustainable and prosperous world.”
Josephine Philips, Founder of Sojo said: “To have won first prize at the Santander X Entrepreneurship Awards is one of the most exciting moments on my Sojo journey so far. We were amongst an incredible cohort of exceptional businesses, and it is such an honour to have been selected as the winner. This funding will allow us to accelerate our offering by allowing us to partner with businesses as well as enable us to expand our service beyond London. The Santander programme has been invaluable with workshops, mentorship, interns and support that have really helped Sojo to flourish. I’m very grateful and I’m so excited for what the future holds!”
Paul Mendieta, Co-Founder of Deploy said: “It’s fantastic to be the runner-up of the Santander X Entrepreneurship Awards. The prize will support the growth of our business by enabling us to reach the communities which we have been aiming to help for so long. The programme of support throughout the competition has been incredible and it has enabled us to expand our network and be part of such a great community.”
In addition to the two overall winners, three other businesses reached the final and received a cash prize of £5,000 of business support from Santander. They were announced as follows:
• Cos Colours, which creates planet-friendly paints with a purpose, from the University of Sussex;
• Kestrl, which is an app that helps Muslims to achieve their financial goals in line with their values, from the University of Cambridge; and
• M cultivo, which empowers the next generation of coffee producers with accessible, transformative technology, from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
The competition final follows the Santander X programme for 2021, a five-month virtual business acceleration programme dedicated to help all 82 innovative student and graduate businesses of the bank’s partner universities to scale. The programme included online sessions led by entrepreneurs and experts on topics such as: building your brand; future-proofing your business; funding and finance; and wellbeing and resilience, as well as 1:1 coaching and business mentoring.
Research conducted Santander Universities by in 2020 revealed that over 480,000 (27 per cent)(2) students run or plan to run a business whilst they are at university. The study(3) – which polled 1,000 undergraduates from across the UK – found that almost one in ten (9%) entrepreneurs are already running a business alongside their studies, an increase from just 6% recorded in 2018(4) , with an additional 18% of students saying they have plans to start their own business venture in the near future.
Since the competition launched in 2011, Santander Universities has awarded more than £600,000 in support of student start-ups across the UK and given universities the chance to showcase entrepreneurial talent from across the country. Overall, Santander Universities has provided over £2.5m of funding each year to support entrepreneurship at its 85 UK university partners.
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Notes to Editors
1) About the 2021 Finalists:
• Cos Colours, University of Sussex
Cos Colours create planet-friendly paints with a purpose. From production to packaging, these one-of-a-kind artist materials suitable for all abilities are created with circular economy design principles in mind. They provide an innovative solution to the ever-growing cosmetic waste problem by minimising the amount of colour cosmetic waste heading to landfills and incinerators and transforming them into watercolour paints.
• Deploy Tech Ltd, Imperial College London (Runner-up)
There are an estimated 2.2 billion people globally that lack access to clean drinking water. Deploy provides game-changing innovation in water management, developing the first-ever packed, air-deployed, ready-to-use concrete water tank manufactured with a concrete-filled fabric material which transforms into a unified concrete vessel when hydrated. https://www.deploytechltd.com
• Kestrl, University of Cambridge
Kestrl is an app that helps Muslims to achieve their financial goals in line with their values. Kestrl does this by helping them to Budget, Save and Invest, without compromising on their religious beliefs. The app leverages Open Banking, enabling users to plug in existing bank accounts, view their transactions in one place and have a bespoke budget built for them. https://kestrl.io
• M cultivo, London School of Economics And Political Science
M cultivo empowers the next generation of coffee producers using accessible, transformative technology. Millions of coffee producers lack the information and market representation to negotiate a sustainable price for their crop. M cultivo’s web-based platform generates dashboard insights that drive positive change in coffee producing organizations. It allows users to manage their relationships and their operation with a single tool. http://mcultivo.com
• Sojo, King's College London (Winner)
Sojo is working to make the fashion industry circular by making clothing alterations and repairs mainstream. Sojo does this by connecting customers to local seamster businesses through its App and bicycle delivery service to ensure people can get their clothes fitted or fixed in an easy and hassle-free way. https://sojo.uk
1) According to the HESA Data, there are 1.8million undergraduate students in the UK. The research shows 27% of students have already started a business or are planning to do so – a figure of 486,000.
2) Research is drawn from a survey conducted by OnePoll between 5th and 10th August 2020. The base size was 1,000 UK undergraduate students and was weighted to be nationally representative.
3) Research conducted by YouthSight, 1st – 11th January 2018 amongst a UK representative sample of 2,030 full time undergraduate students.
Santander Universities
Banco Santander is firmly committed to progress and inclusive, sustainable growth, with a long-standing dedication to higher education that sets it apart from the world's other financial institutions. Banco Santander has committed more than EUR €2 billion and awarded over 630,000 scholarships and grants since the Universities programme began. It has 1,000 agreements in place with universities and institutions in 31 countries, of which over 80 are in the UK. Through these agreements Santander provides education, entrepreneurship and employability opportunities for university students and training and support for the growth and transformation of innovative start-ups and SMEs. For further information please visit: https://www.santander.co.uk/universities
Santander UK is a financial services provider in the UK that offers a wide range of personal and commercial financial products and services. At 30 June 2021, the bank had around 20,900 employees and serves around 14 million active customers, via a nationwide branch network, telephone, mobile and online banking. Santander UK is subject to the full supervision of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) in the UK. Santander UK plc customers’ eligible deposits are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) in the UK.
Banco Santander (SAN SM, STD US, BNC LN) is a leading retail and commercial bank, founded in 1857 and headquartered in Spain. It has a meaningful presence in 10 core markets in the Europe, North America and South America regions, and is one of the largest banks in the world by market capitalization. Its purpose is to help people and businesses prosper in a simple, personal and fair way. Santander is building a more responsible bank and has made a number of commitments to support this objective, including raising over €120 billion in green financing between 2019 and 2025, as well as financially empowering more than 10 million people over the same period. At the end of the first half of 2021, Banco Santander had €1.1 trillion in total funds, 150 million customers, of which 24.2 million are loyal and 45.3 million are digital, 10,000 branches and 190,000 employees.
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