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Winner announced from this year's 3rd Fuel Awards Cohort!

Class of 2021 summer cohort

The FUEL Awards programme 2021 concluded on a live virtual pitching event and the judges decided their final winners.

The FUEL Awards programme 2021 concluded on a live virtual pitching event on 3rd June, which saw 6 entrepreneurs awarded funding.

The virtual event saw 9 entrepreneurs from the FUEL programme pitch their business ideas in front of a live audience and panel of esteemed judges in hopes of getting their hands on £2000 funding to support the growth and scaling of their ventures. All 9 pitchers took part in our streamlined FUEL Awards Bootcamp programme, a business scale up programme sponsored by Santander Universities and facilitated by Mike Foster of The Entrepreneurs Mentor. Attendees of the programme watched webinars and attended intensive day long sessions to develop their scale up strategy. The attendees were joined by a number of mentors from across sectors who shared valuable advice allowing our entrepreneurs to take their business to the next level.

On the night, we saw over 40 people from across the globe tune in to support our entrepreneurs, along with our four expert judges:

The judges granted 6 FUEL Award prizes, each of £2000, on the night to the following businesses:

Alex Biffen - The Devon Card
The Devon Card is an app that provides the local community and guests with information on Devon businesses and provides them offers & promotions that supports the local economy within the places they love to eat, shop, work and explore! 

Hector Forwood - Comtura AI
We automate data entry into CRMs using NLP, ML and AI. We are pioneering "speech-to-admin".  Increase integrity of CRM data (more complete / up to date fields) Increase accuracy of CRM data (it's not been interpreted or misunderstood by the AE/BDM aka no Chinese CRM whispers!) 

June Murage - Mirage by Murage
Mirage by Murage creates sustainable living products, with our flagship product being scented candles in upcycled beer and spirit bottles. Our business started as a recycling and upcycling initiative, during the covid-19 lock down, and has since expanded. 

Liilian Gathoni – Day one events
Day One Events is a business that seeks to change the face of events in Kenya and Africa by being a leader in hosting and creating awareness of Eco-friendly events. The business seeks to use Eco-friendly equipment and materials as upcycled and recycled materials.

Matt Woolford - Trendineer
Trendineer is a social network that integrates an online marketplace for businesses to directly sell their products and provides the participating businesses with affordable marketing tools to enable them to increase their reach to prospective customers. 

Ruth Obediah - BraidsCentral
The opportunity presented here, is to help black women look after their hair in the safest way possible whilst making it look fun and stylish. There is so much scope on how diverse braids can be and more than ever, braids have become an integral part to the global popular culture. 

On the night, Ruth Obediah’s ‘BraidsCentral’ walked away with the People’s Choice prize, which saw the live audience vote for their favourite pitch of the night. She received a package of business support.

All those who were not awarded funding on the night have been given feedback and are invited to join us for our cohort next Semester. If you want the opportunity to pitch next Semester, join our FUEL Awards Programme 2021. Find out more about FUEL Awards

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