49. Whisk

Founder: Nick Holzherr
Founded: June 2012 (launched January 2013)
Website: www.whisk.com

After feeling frustrated that he never had the time to food shop for exciting meals, Whisk.com founder Nick Holzherr wanted to give fellow time strapped foodies and home chefs an app that would mitigate the cumbersome process of in store and online ingredient shopping.

Whisk is a free app for consumers, saving them time by turning recipes into smart, digital shopping lists that map ingredients to items. It also benefits publishers, food brands and supermarkets by delivering WhiskAds, content-relevant in-app adverts which intelligently target consumers along the path to purchase – with industry names such as the Food Network, Ocado, Waitrose and Tesco already integrated.

After pitching the idea to Alan Sugar as a finalist on The Apprentice, Holzherr raised £1.2m funding from venture capital firms and grants to bring his idea to life – and three years later the app is really starting to snowball. The last 12 months have seen growth of five times the previous year, with over 30 million people viewing Whisk functionality on more than 300,000 publisher partner recipes each month.

Launched in eight countries and now available in six European languages, Holzherr has further ambitious international expansion plans for 2015 alongside improvements to existing technologies to offer more personalised reccomendations to users. With the same passion for making new businesses as he does making meals, this young entrepreneur looks to have a recipe for success.