44. UniQuest

Founders: Rachel Fletcher and Natalie Letcher
Founded: August 2013 (launched October 2013)
Website: www.uni-quest.co.uk

Having worked in higher education for 30 years, Rachel Fletcher and Natalie Letcher felt that university service providers were becoming increasingly unable to keep up with the evolving demands of home, EU, and international student enrolment. Their solution? To create a unique service that would make university leaders’ lives easier – an idea that would develop into UniQuest.

Launched in October 2013, London-based UniQuest provides a customised “hands-on” service which promises to enable universities to increase their enrolment-driven tuition fee revenue. With a number of UK universities already signed up, including the University of the West of England and the University of Roehampton, the service gives universities real-time access to data, reports and insights so that they can optimise their enrolment recruitment and marketing activities.

The platform also includes a responsive service for prospective students – email, phone, live chat etc. – and simple data forms for universities to convert applicants and offer holders.

While Fletcher and Letcher say they have had to work hard to convince universities to trust them, raise awareness, and be invited to tender, the duo has successfully overcome these challenges; winning a number of “long-term, multi-year contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.”

Given that the business is already profitable with a team of 24 employees, Fletcher and Letcher are now looking into expansion. New staff hires are also in the pipeline, alongside an office move to accommodate its growing headcount.