88. Proversity

Founders: Carl Dawson and Krishan Meetoo
Founded: November 2013 (launched January 2014)
Website: www.proversity.org

With 13 years of experience in human resources, Carl Dawson was frustrated by the gap between education and employment. To fill the widening hole in today’s job market, he created digital university Proversity – offering online educational programmes to equip graduates with the skills needed by today’s employers.

Proversity partners with companies to digitise their educational programmes and connects learners to job opportunities, with a revenue model based on the delivery of B2B sales of its course production and hosting. For example, the lowest fee is £15,000 for three months hosting and two modules, and the highest is £100,000 for 12 months and 25 modules.

Launched just over a year ago, this relatively young company has already delivered courses for prestigious names such as Network Rail and Magnox and is currently in production with a host of names including Lloyd’s Bank, the Bank of England and the Royal Artillery.

Buoyed by this success, Proversity hopes to expand internationally and work with some of the world’s leading organisations over the next year, forecasting sustainable growth that will lead to an estimated 1,000 people into jobs, 100,000 CPD (continuing professional development) learners and one million learner hours. Ambitious aims, but achievable given its projected £2m turnover this year.