Jobs Minister Richard Bruton pictured with the winners of Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur 2015
After months of presentations, pitches and training, 1,400 applications, 93 regional finalists and 24 national finalists, the overall winners of Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur 2015 were announced at the final in Google’s Headquarters in Dublin over the weekend. The top prizes this year went to a female pregnancy planning app, a company seeking to provide developing countries with high quality diagnostic tests, and a family business which was transformed from a traditional Gift & Garden Centre to a leading entertainment destination.
James Foody of Ayda took home the top prize and title, along with a €50,000 investment for his business. Blaine Doyle from GlowDX won the Best New Idea award and €20,000 investment prize while James Keogh from Rathwood Home & Garden World in Wicklow won the Best Established Business award and €30,000 investment prize.
Read on to find out more about the winners, and the business ideas which helped them win the top prizes this year....
Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur & Best Start Up Business 2015
This year’s winner of Best Start Up Business and overall IBYE winner is James Foody for his company’s pregnancy planning app.
The 24-year-old Sligo native and UCC graduate is the co-founder of Ayda, a female health tech company with operations in Cork and San Francisco. Ayda is developing a wearable product and accompanying app that enables women to identify their fertility patterns so they can maximise their chances of conceiving naturally. Ayda’s wearable product syncs directly with the Ayda app and accurately determines when users ovulate each month, making it much easier to plan pregnancies than current methods.
Both the app and wearable product will be launched in mid-2016, with plans to set up manufacturing in Shenzhen, China.
WATCH: IBYE chats to James Foody of Ayda
Best Business Idea 2015
Blaine Doyle is this year’s winner of IBYE’s Best Business Idea and €20,000 for his diagnostics company GlowDX.
The DCU graduate and Kilkenny man is the CEO and co-founder of a company that employs novel molecular science to provide developing countries with high quality diagnostic tests, focusing on neglected tropical diseases. The company plans to supply developing countries with the molecular tools for early detection and establish a system to improve public health through the integration of a data management application facilitating the prevention of epidemics. GlowDX is supported by a number of external technology contractors and universities in Cork, Dublin and Honduras.
In 2016, GloxDx will launch a Dengue Test in Honduras and Start Research and Development on a test for Chikungunya.
WATCH: IBYE chats to Blaine Doyle of GlowDX
Best Established Business 2015
James Keogh was awarded this year’s Best Established Business as well as an investment prize of €30,000 for his business Rathwood Home & Garden World in Wicklow.
James became Managing Director of his family’s business after completing a degree in Business and Management in DIT. Since then, he has transformed the business from a traditional Gift & Garden Centre to a leading entertainment destination with over 250,000 visitors every year and 200 employees. The business offers customers retail and restaurant space, a falconry, a maze of Ireland, forest walks and a full calendar of events all year around, such as a Santa train this Christmas.
James plans to increase the number of employees at Rathwood by 20 next year and is targeting a turnover of over €5m in 2016.
WATCH: IBYE chats to James Keogh of Rathwood Home & Garden World
What is Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur competition?
Part of Action Plan for Jobs, Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur was officially launched in May 2014. The competition, run by the Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs) network, encourages people under the age of 30 to enter their outstanding business idea for a start-up or existing business.
The aim of Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur is to encourage and support entrepreneurship as a career choice and to encourage the development of new innovative businesses by Ireland’s young entrepreneurs. This is hugely important for job creation as two thirds of all new jobs are generated by businesses in the first five years of existence – more start-ups and a thriving entrepreneurial culture will lead to more jobs being created.
Mentoring, marketing and other supports are also available to participating businesses at various stages of the competition. The competition is judged under three categories:
- Best Business Idea (best idea for a new business)
- Best Start-Up Business (in business for up to 24 months or less)
- Best Established Business (in business for longer than 24 months)
IBYE 2015 in numbers
- €2 million overall investment fund for county and national winners
- 1,400 applicants from 18-30 years of age
- 40 international applicants
- 93 regional finalists from 31 Local Enterprise Offices
- 24 finalists from 17 counties
- 3 overall winners