The UK economy is continuing to be resilient despite uncertainty in the last 12 months and we are still seeing many new start-ups emerging every month. In the United Kingdom, we witness on average approximately 100,000 growth start-ups per annum. So, it would be quite interesting to look at some of the most promising start ups and how some have been coping in their specific markets.
Gousto
Gousto is an online meal kit company that was able to raise a total of £75m from venture capital investment and expects to be providing 400 million meals within the UK by 2025. It currently delivers over 1.5 million meals a month to customers and is seeing a massive 170% year on year growth. Customers are supplied with recipe kit boxes which include ready measured, fresh ingredients and easy to follow recipes and has been voted the best recipe kit service by many different awards.
Intouch Games
Intouch is a gaming company, based in the West Midlands and is the parent company behind well-known iGaming and bingo brands such as Dr Slot, Pocketwin and mFortune. They are highly regarded for their expertise in developing exclusive slot and casino games in house. Last year Intouch Games announced plans to create another 150 jobs and also renovate their offices in Halesowen. The company has also won many awards over the past few years including the very prestigious 1 Star accreditation from the Best Companies To Work For, in both 2017 and 2019, which is something they will definitely be looking to build on.
Perkbox
Founded in 2015 Perkbox transformed the face of employee engagement by developing an innovative staff benefits platform, which is now number one in the market and used by more than 7000 UK companies, including Nandos, Wasabi, Whole Foods and Ikea and now has more than 250 employees. October 2018 also saw Perkbox launch in France and set up an office within Paris and they hope to have around 3000 registered businesses within the first year, which is roughly the same as what was achieved within the UK in the first year. Launches are also scheduled for further European locations and also the US and Australia, further down the line.
Lyst
Lyst was founded in 2010 and has seen a growth in value of 134.8x since 2015. Lyst is a global fashion search engine that has seen $60.5 in funding and is used by more than 70 million shoppers per year at present, from more than 120 different countries. It offers more than 5 million products, from 12,000 of the world’s leading brands and retailers in one place. Last year Lyst ran another round of financing in order to support its continued expansion into new international markets and help growth across their teams in both New York and London. The funding will also be used to fund the data science team who are pioneering machine learning, AI and computer vision. Lyst state that its revenues have increased more than 400 percent over the last three years, since the last time funds were raised.
