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Major prize for Baldwins KickStart winners

Young entrepreneurs who have launched businesses which design and sell football-inspired T-shirts, Google glass apps for the blind and provide virtual assistants for start-up companies will be competing for a £20,000 first prize at a regional awards ceremony.

Baldwins Accountants’ second KickStart Young Entrepreneurs Awards will be held at Villa Park on Thursday, November 20 when three businesses will be challenging to secure a £10,000 grant along with £10,000 worth of mentoring and accountancy advice from the Midlands-wide company.

Both runners-up will be rewarded with £5,000 of mentoring and accountancy advice from Baldwins following the judges’ decision after giving their presentations to a 300-strong audience.

Luke (22) and Gabriel (19) Cuthbert launched Art of Football from their Nottingham home last December to sell hand-crafted T-shirts which capture defining moments in football.

The brothers have sold their stylish designs to supporters in 27 countries ranging from Australia to America and Singapore to Germany.

Luke said: “The response has been great and we have plans to expand the product range to jumpers and phone cases and to provide clothes for women and children as well as produce pieces for other sports particularly with the 2015 Rugby World Cup being hosted by England.”

Gabriel added: “It would be fantastic to win KickStart because it would be great to know that other people can see the potential that we see in the business and to receive the mentoring and accountancy advice.”

Birmingham-based Stan Karpenko (25), co-founder of Give Vision, said the company was developing an app for Google glass which will act as ‘eyes’ for blind and visually impaired people.

A prototype has been developed which brings together facial recognition, converts text messages to sound, and highlights spatial awareness from pedestrian crossings to barriers.

He said: “Using advanced pattern recognition algorithms, our software engineers have “trained” Google Glass to recognise objects and text in real time.

“It will make a huge difference to the lives of blind and visually impaired people because they will be able to walk down the street in confidence on their own or use public transport so this technology will be a huge game-changer.”

Ellie Bekalo (22) and Sam Wilson (23) launched Virtalent in Birmingham in July which provides online virtual assistant services to small businesses and start-ups.

The graduates from Aston University employ highly skilled university students in the UK to carry out tasks ranging from administration to marketing for a flexible number of hours.

Ellie said: “When you are an entrepreneur just starting a business, there might be an area that you struggle to develop. We can assign a student who is capable of assisting in that business area, so that the entrepreneur can concentrate on the value-adding aspects of their business.”

Sam added: “It also reduces the costs of taking on permanent staff because there might be times of the year when a business is particularly busy and extra help is needed.”

David Baldwin, a partner at Baldwins Accountants, said the young business owners had beaten some extremely talented candidates to reach the final.

“The finalists will present an overview of their business on the night to the audience and we want them to highlight their product or service, their future plans and their personality,” he said.

“We want to give the first prize to a business which has spotted a gap in the market and has long-term potential.”

Tickets to attend the gala dinner are available from info@baldwinandco.co.uk

CAPTION: From the left, Luke Cuthbert (Art of Football), John Baldwin (Baldwins Accountants), Sam Wilson (Virtalent), Ellie Bekalo (Virtalent), Shaun Knight (Baldwins Accountants), Stan Karpenko (Give Vision)

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Matt Joyce .