• Today, Virgin Media Business has named the six finalists of Voom 2018 – Ireland and the UK’s biggest business pitching competition.
• Dublin based Junior Einsteins have made it into the final six and will pitch pitching their business idea live to Richard Branson for the chance of walking away with a share of over €1 million in prizes 

 

The entrepreneurs pitching live at tomorrow’s final and seeking to be crowned winners in the Spark & Start category have been releveled and include Junior Einsteins – a science club inspiring children into STEM subjects through hands-on interactive experiments and amazing science events, Castify which helps people find and cast actors and Gobbler Boats which are helping remove oil and plastic from the ocean.

 

Competing to win the Scale & Grow prize (for businesses with between 20 and 250 employees) will be drinks company Rejuce which makes beautiful juices from ugly fruit & veg; Action Petz – a franchise of safe indoor and outdoor dog parks; and Therapy Box which creates apps to help diagnose, treat and support people with communication disabilities.

 

The six finalist have been whittled down from the thousands of entrepreneurs that applied to this year’s Voom competition. The finalists are now just one pitch away from being crowned the winners of Voom 2018 and walking away with a share of €1.1 million in prizes.

 

Scrutinising their pitches at the final will be Virgin Founder Richard Branson, founder of Innocent drinks Richard Reed, serial entrepreneur and TV presenter Sophie Morgan, founder and CEO of Tropic Skincare Susie Ma, and Virgin Media Business’ MD Peter Kelly. 

 

The entrepreneurs secured their place at the grand final after first attracting public votes before going on to survive a grilling from industry experts. Over 200,000 votes were cast by the public to shortlist the 80 businesses that made it to the gruelling semi-final in Manchester. There, they had to pitch their ideas and were grilled by panels of judges who assessed their ideas and business plans before whittling them down to just six finalists that will now face Richard Branson and the Voom judges.

 

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