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Winners of Young Enterprise’s Start Up Final Unveiled

Winners of Young Enterprise’s Start Up Final Unveiled

1230 young entrepreneurs from 21 universities fought to be named the UK’s company of the year

Press release – Young Enterprise, the national financial and enterprise education charity, has named Hear n Protect as the winner of its Start Up Programme, a national initiative which gives university students the opportunity to develop employability skills and prepare for the world of work.

Supported by national and regional organisations including Avanade, Santander, The Marketing Trust, Everards of Leicestershire, Institute of Export and International Trade and the Institute of Leadership and Management, the event saw 15 teams of some of the UK’s brightest young entrepreneurial minds competing for a series of awards. The winners of the three main awards are as follows:

Best Overall Company 2022 - Hear n Protect (University of Salford), who created an innovative ear safety device to reduce hearing damage in a number of sectors. The team has secured widespread industry support and a lead with an international festival.

Company of the Year Silver Award - Soulier (Manchester Met University), who designed a protection film for sneakers, to improve their durability and protect their value. The team already has its product stocked in a store in the North West.

Award for Best Company Presentation - Safe U (University of Liverpool) who designed Watch U, a discrete safety device to be worn on a watch to help against attacks. The team has already received significant funding to progress and has secured a number of retail deals.

Andy Firr, Start-up Programme Lead at Young Enterprise says: “This was our 11th annual Young Enterprise UK Start Up Final and by far and away the greatest standard of students we have brought together as a cohort in that time. The ideas were innovative, had a strong social conscious theme running throughout and many have a real potential to become businesses of the future. This year’s undergraduates have shown incredible belief, determination and resilience after what has been a very difficult last two years of adapted education. They are a credit to themselves and the institutes they represent.”

Young Enterprise empowers young people across the UK with employability and financial education programmes. The Start Up programme is aimed at higher and further education students aged 18 and over. It challenges groups to set up and run a company from start to end and to enter competition events from a local and up to European level.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Lucie Hayes .