Meet 26 of the hottest UK startups about to become household names as part of Tech City UK’s Future Fifty
An innovative flower delivery startup, an online money transfer service and a recipe subscription service are among 26 of the hottest startups in the UK which have been identified as having the potential to become household names and globally recognised companies.
Bloom & Wild, Azimo and Gousto are among the up-and-coming names joining the likes of fintech unicorn Transferwise and dinner favourite Deliveroo in Tech City UK's Future Fifty programme, City A.M. can exclusively reveal.
Ad tech firm SuperAwesome, which City A.M. revealed was exploring plans for a potential IPO, is also one of the firms chosen to join the scheme by top entrepreneurs and investors. Future Fifty supports late stage pioneering UK tech startups and boasts Just Eat and Zoopla among its alumni, both of which went on to float on the London Stock Exchange.
Of the 77 companies which have been through the Future Fifty programme since 2014, five have pursued IPOs collectively raising $1.5bn, while 17 have been acquired – most recently the blockbuster acquisition of Skyscanner by China's Ctrip for £1.4bn. Figures also reveal they have created nearly 30,000 jobs around the world and raised combined funding of $3.8bn, 40 per cent of that last year alone.
"The fact that so many Future Fifty companies are now household names is testimony that [the Future Fifty programme] works," said business secretary Greg Clark.
“The innovation that we are seeing in all of these young firms is key to the government’s modern industrial strategy. We recognise that through tech and the digitisation of many aspects of UK business, we can create new opportunities across the city to expand our economy and make it more productive. The companies that join Future Fifty today will be the established businesses and employers of tomorrow.”
Digital minister Matt Hancock added: "These young companies are part of the reason our booming digital economy is already worth more than £118bn a year and growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy."
The government is expected to announce its long-delayed digital strategy in the coming weeks, refreshing the policy plans which originally spawned Tech City and such programmes. It will outline fresh plans to support tech startups and the UK digital economy which has already handed a boost from the Prime Minister's industrial strategy.
"Britain remains one of the best places in the world to start a tech business and we will make sure it remains so," said Tech City UK chief executive Gerard Grech.
"These companies have global ambitions and with the support of the tech community we will do everything we can to help them, so that they can create jobs and opportunities across the UK, as their successful predecessors have done.”
The Future Fifty 2017 – who's in?
Retail businesses make up the majority of the new joiners, accounting for a third, while fintechs are the second biggest sector and a fifth of all the firms are from outside of London. Four of the companies were graduates of Upscale, a scheme designed to help early-stage startups scale up.
| Name | What it does |
| Azimo | An online international money transfer service that allows people to send money to any internet-connected device in over 190 countries around the world |
| Blis | Uses location data technology to create audiences for advertisers |
| Bloom & Wild | Provides flower delivery through the letterbox |
| Carwow | The most convenient, stress free way to find and buy a new car.
|
| ClearScore | A company that provides free access to credit scores and reports |
| Condeco | Helps companies manage their meeting and office spaces more effectively |
| Ebury | A financial services company that helps small and medium enterprises grow internationally with foreign exchange, business lending and cash management solutions. |
| Epos Now | A point-of-sale software and hardware provider that automates small business banking |
| Fairsail | Provides cloud-based human resources and people management software to mid-sized organisations |
| Festicket | An online marketplace to discover and book musical festival experiences |
| Gousto | Provides innovative recipe boxes with pre-portioned ingredients packaged and delivered to the door each week |
| Interact | Provides intranet software and professional services to help companies solve internal communication and collaboration challenges |
| Kano | Creates computers and coding kits for all ages |
| LoveCrafts | Is an online community and marketplace for the crafts sector |
| My UNiDAYS | Connects brands and services to a verified audience of students around the world |
| Onfido | An identity verification platform that helps over 1,000 companies ensure their customers are who they claim to be |
| Receipt Bank | Automates small business bookkeeping |
| Roli | A music technology company that makes a modular music creation system that opens up new possibilities for musical expression |
| Tails.com | An online pet nutrition service that makes and delivers tailor made food for an individual dog’s unique diet and nutritional needs |
| Thread | An e-commerce company that uses human stylists and machine learning to help men dress well without going shopping |
| Threads Styling | A company reinventing luxury goods commerce for the Snapchat generation |
| Spitfire Audio | Provides virtual instruments to composers and producers to produce and earn royalties on quality musical samples |
| SuperAwesome | Powers a kid-safe digital media ecosystem with products that are designed for kids’ data privacy requirements |
| Swoon Editions | An online furniture brand that works directly with suppliers to provide better quality products at a better price than traditional retailers |
| Trak Global Group | A telematics company that uses embedded devices to gather data and manage driver risk |
| Ve Interactive | Provides software that helps companies with digital advertising and online conversion |
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