2. Perkbox

Founders: Saurav Chopra and Chieu Cao
Founded: January 2015
Website: www.perkbox.co.uk

Many start-ups are often afraid to change or adapt their business model for fear of failure, but the early success of Perkbox, which has pivoted three times since launch, shows that change can often lead to something great. In this case, a multi-million revenue business with 300,000 customers and a team of 95 employees.

Launched in January 2015 by Saurav Chopra and Chieu Cao, Perkbox is an employee engagement platform focused on helping small and medium businesses and start-ups to attract and “nurture” their staff. Companies pay to use the platform and this gives their employees access to over 130 perks such as vouchers to spend on food and entertainment, free phone insurance, discounted travel, movie tickets and more.

Used by brands such as BUPA, British Gas, and WorldPay, Perkbox promises to gives businesses the “tools to compete with other companies for talent” and Chopra and Cao say that their focus is workplace happiness – “not just as a philosophy we ‘sell’ but ardently practice”.

While Chopra and Cao say they had issues with “haemorrhaging cash” when they initially started, this issue has been more than resolved with projected revenue of £15m for 2016 and investment from Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman.

What lies in store for the next part of their start-up journey? Chopra and Cao tell us that they intend to launch operations across Europe and the US over the next year with the intention to “bring happiness” to one million workplaces across the world by 2021.

Having achieved so much in just over 12 months, these goals appear to be well within grasp.