52. Smarter

Founders: Christian Lane
Founded: July 2013 (Launched June 2014)
Website: www.smarter.am

Imagine being able to turn your kettle on from anywhere in your home. After arguing with his family about whose turn it was to turn the kettle on, Christian Lane saw the potential for this to become a reality.

Three years later, Smarter Applications sells two connected appliances for the home – the iKettle and a smart grind and brew coffee maker, enabling users to pre-boil water or make a fresh coffee from an app on their smartphone. Retailing in Amazon, Currys and John Lewis, Smarter received over 1,000 orders in less than two hours and went on to sell more than £200,000 worth of kettles in the first few weeks of trading.

Today it has a community of 100,000 daily users. And tea and coffee is just the beginning: the company is currently in the process of developing a range of products for the connected home including a low-cost connected fridge so you can see a snapshot of its content when out shopping, and a food wastage solution.

This isn’t the first venture for Lane who started his first stationary business at 18, which he grew with Theo Paphitis after securing funding on Dragons’ Den. Set to turnover £5m in 2016 and with a host of exciting developments in the pipeline, this is a business with big potential.