18. Laundrapp (2016)

Founders: Nicholas Bransby-Williams, Antony Pink, Dominic Perks and Edward Relf
Founded: April 2014 (Launched January 2015)
Website: www.laundrapp.com

Using their three decades of experience as digital entrepreneurs, Dominic Perks, Edward Relf, Antony Pink and Nicholas Bransby-Williams saw an opportunity to disrupt the outdated laundry and dry cleaning industry the same way Uber and Airbnb had disrupted theirs.

They launched Laundrapp, an app that allows users to organise collection, cleaning and return of their dirty laundry from their phones at a time and place that suits them – with prices ranging from £2.50 per kg. The service – that came in at 29 in the Startups 100 2015 – claims to be expanding at a rate of one new location every week and is now available in more than 100 of the UK’s towns and cities including London, Bristol, Edinburgh, Manchester and Nottingham. To date, Laundrapp has cleaned over 750,000 items for everyone from young professionals to students.

The Startups Awards Rising Star of the Year finalist continues to evolve – most recently with the addition of a shoe repair and cleaning service and an “Uber style” real-time driver tracking service. Next on the cards is international expansion, as well as expansion through franchising and technology licensing. A start-up that continues to innovate and grow, the ambitious business expects one day to be one of the world’s “most valuable” on-demand technology companies.