Here are some examples of companies that have formed through Oxford Entrepreneurs.
Boso.com - Kulveer and Harjeet Taggar
Enterprising undergraduates create first ever student online marketplace
What is Boso?
Boso.com is an online marketplace for students to trade all those items they need while at University but may never use again. Users can browse items for sale, advertise their unwanted possessions, and post requests for wanted items.
Who are we?
BOSO was founded by Kulveer Taggar and Harjeet Taggar through the OE Young Enterprise scheme. Kulveer graduated from St John’s in 2005 and having spent 7 months as a Commodities Analyst at Deutsche Bank, he gave in his notice in February to run BOSO full time. Harjeet has Law finals in 2006 and Tom Blomfield, the Technical Director is in his third year of a Law with French course at Balliol.
Boso now employs students from Universities across Oxford and London as on-campus brand managers, with Keren Mitchell looking after Oxford .
Where we are now?
BOSO initially launched in Oxford where it has well over 1,000 members and now boasts membership from over 60 universities. This success has lured web-designers Groovytrain into redesigning the site and has even attracted the interest of the media: the team are currently being filmed for upcoming Channel 4 show Tricky Business. So far, all this has been achieved without any serious marketing but all that is about to change. BOSO’s co-founder cousins Kulveer and Harjeet Taggar are looking to market the site extensively at universities in Oxford and London this term and have already recruited regional marketing teams and sought to develop links with student bodies -a method that they hope to be able to roll out nationwide when they pursue the widespread expansion planned for the summer.
For more information, please contact Kulveer Taggar, at kul@boso.com.
WearFair - Stephen Bardle
WearFair is a fair trade jewellery company, based upon an initial business model developed under the Young Enterprise Graduate Scheme, 2004-05. The YE company was called Labislajulla, and sold fair trade jewellery sourced from South America at various social and cultural events around Oxford . The company made a healthy profit and helped raise the profile of fair trade within the University.
WearFair was set-up in the summer of 2006 to build upon the achievements of Labislajulla. The centre of the company is its ecommerce site, at www.wearfair.co.uk, which aims to counteract recent press cynicism about fair trade by using the internet to make the company as transparent as possible. WearFair is also developing a business-to-business capacity, and already supplies a number of art gallery shops. The company exhibited at this year’s Mad Exhibition at Earls Court.
For the immediate future WearFair will develop a wider product range, as well as develop innovative systems with which to make the website as interactive as possible. We are also constantly working on maximising our search engine rating. In the long term, WearFair will expand its geographical reach, and distribution centres will be set-up in Ireland and America.
Tom Savage - Blueventures and Travelroots
www.blueventures.org
Blue Ventures is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to facilitating projects and expedition that enhance global marine conservation and research. Since 2002, we have run over 25 expeditions with over 280 international participants to Madagascar, Tanzania, New Zealand, The Comoros and South Africa.
Blue Ventures co-ordinates expeditions consisting of scientists and volunteers working hand-in-hand with local biologists, marine institutes, NGOs, and communities whose livelihoods depend on these ecosystems, to carry out research, environmental awareness and conservation programmes at threatened habitats around the world.
www.travelroots.com
Travelroots is a responsible Travel agency set up to try to help ensure that travel does good, not harm. Despite their good intentions, most tourists damage the places they visit. Travelroots believes that the best holidays are those places where ones hosts care deeply about their local environment and their guests.
Problems he’s had and how he’s overcome them:
Setting up and running a fully-functioning diving and research centre 250km from the nearest phone/road in South-West Madagascar, with no communication other than by satellite telephone. We overcame it by an incredible amount of hard work!
Major successes:
Last year we were highly commended in the responsible travel awards, this year we have won the SEED Awards. Our project incorporating; Madagascar’s first community-run, self-sustaining experimental Marine Protected Area was chosen as a ’shining example of how economic development and environmental protection can go hand in hand’, by the international panel which made the selection. More recently I was runner up in the social category of the Enterprising Young Brits Awards, from over 4000 applicants.
What I love about (social) entrepreneurship:
Being able to be free to run with your own ideas, dreams and goals!
DesignTheTime.com - Thomas Whitfield and Karlheinz Toni
DesignTheTime.com is a consumer media venture designed for people to watch and share TIME through a unique web experience.
The Idea
Remember all those special moments — for instance, your first kiss, or the moment when you were on stage and announced winner of the Oxford Entrepreneurs Idea Idol business plan competition? Have you ever wanted to stop time and freeze those minutes for eternity? The aim of DesignTheTime.com is to literally sell time. People can buy any minute for 1USD each and store personal content on our servers for eternity. By using the supplied designing tools or by uploading videos, photos, and text, people can leave their individual mark on TIME and let the whole world — or simply somebody special — know about it.
Milestones
The idea was to create a place for people to engage in new ways with the term TIME, by sharing, rating, and commenting on minutes and moments. DesignTheTime.com originally started out as a fun idea and has now grown into an online platform available to anyone. We plan to build it as a community that is highly motivated for watching and sharing TIME as part of a larger online social network.
Update: 8/2/07 Design The Time wins Idea Idol and is presented with a blank cheque to develop the site from investor judges Dan Wagner and Sháá Wasmund!
Foomee.com – foomee, fooyou, fooeverybody! - Thomas Whitfield and Karlheinz Toni
The Idea
Run out of cash? Are you fed up with applying for scholarships for financing study or traveling abroad? Visit www.foomee.com to learn more about an easy and fun way to earn some cash and possibly win a scholarship.
Foomees are little strawberries hiding on our server, each tagged with a time-stamp. By clicking on advertisements and answering captchas (IQ and maths puzzles), people can collect foomees free of charge.
Once a week a time-stamp is randomly selected and the user that has snatched the foomee closest to that time-stamp wins half our advertising income for that week in cash.
Additionally, we raffle a 20,000 USD FoomeEship available for study at any educational institution in the UK or abroad.
Our objective
Our aim is to provide an entertaining and fun way for financing study and travel abroad. The first round of the FoomEship raffle will be launched in February of 2007.
DesignTheTime.com and foomee.com are members of Incipience Limited, founded by Thomas Whitfield and Karlheinz Toni. Incipience Limited comprises a conglomerate of creative ventures mainly operating in online services, advertisement and media.
Thomas Whitfield - http://www.thomas-whitfield.com/Biography_files/Thomas FA Whitfield.pdf
Karlheinz Toni - http://www.incipience.de/curriculum-vitae.pdf
Get Inspired! — Thomas Whitfield, Nina Kruglikova, Vaclav Potesil, Eugen Burdelnii
Get Inspired! – Shape Your Future (www.get-inspired.org)
Eastern European students and recent graduates, particularly those in disadvantaged regions, face a lack of information about possibilities to study abroad. Even highly-qualified students seldom have enough self-confidence to apply to top universities.
The goal of Get-inspired! is to run workshops at Eastern European universities. We will share our experiences by being role models to encourage talented students in realizing their full potential and providing information about the application process and funding opportunities for studying abroad. Companies wishing to recruit graduates with international experience in order to expand their rapidly growing Eastern European offices will finance and fund this endeavor, in return for organized recruiting events.
Milestones
The team of Get Inspired! was formed during one of the Oxford Entrepreneurs “Start a company” sessions a couple of months ago. So far we took a great deal towards implementation of this project. Currently we are in the stage of raising money for our first Get Inspired! workshop series starting in spring 2007.
If you are interested in sponsoring this project or if you are a student and interested in applying as one of our Oxford ambassadors, please contact us and we will get in touch with you shortly.
Contact: thomas.whitfield@bioch.ox.ac.uk
The Organizing team
- Thomas Whitfield, DPhil Biochemistry, Christ Church, Oxford
- Nina Kruglikova, DPhil Environmental Studies, Trinity College, Oxford
- Eugen Burdelnii, International Relations, St. Peters College, Oxford
- Vaclav Potesil, DPhil Medical Imaging, St-Johns College, Oxford
- Mihran Vardanayan, DPhil Astrophysics, Christ Church, Oxford
