The body representing the interests of all of the Welsh universities is sponsoring the graduate startup of the year category at the 2021 Wales Startup Awards. Universities Wales will again be involved in supporting the only awards in the UK that focus on recognising new businesses and celebrating their role in the economy.

Welsh universities provide a range of support to students and graduates to set up their own businesses including practical assistance on office space, bursaries to help with setup costs, and support in identifying and securing investment opportunities. Students and graduates also benefit from mentoring and advice from tutors, lecturers and dedicated enterprise staff who offer help on every step of the Start-up journey.

As a result, Wales performs well on graduate start-ups and consistently outperforms the rest of the UK on the number of graduate startups per capita. More importantly, these start-ups are more likely to last three years or more than those elsewhere in the UK.

Professor Julie Lydon, Chair of Universities Wales, said

“We are delighted to once again sponsor the Graduate Start-Up category at the Wales Start-Up Awards. Graduate start-ups are a vital part of Wales’ economy. With support from Wales’ universities, graduate and student businesses make an innovative and valuable contribution to Wales’ future economic prosperity. We can be proud in Wales to have the highest proportion of graduate start-ups per capita in the UK.

“Everyone’s start up journey is different, but all share an enthusiasm and entrepreneurial spirit that should be championed and celebrated. The pandemic has posed significant challenges to businesses across Wales. As the country builds back after Covid, nurturing and developing the graduate start-up sector will be crucial in Wales’ recovery and in creating a vibrant and diverse economy.”

Ryan Walton, a graduate of Cardiff University, won the category in 2020. He set up his video marketing business Visaura in his second year of university after editing videos for a YouTube channel and receiving a few million views. He said:

“Winning Graduate Start-Up of the year in 2020 was an honour, it was great to get some recognition for our rapid growth and the award itself has certainly reflected well in our ability to gain new business. Despite the challenging climate in the past year, our business has grown tremendously both commercially and in terms of maturity in our market, the biggest challenge for us has been keeping our operation going through multiple lockdowns.

“As a team we love spending time together, so it's been tough to work in a fragmented way over the last twelve months but 2021 has already been an exciting year for us, doubling our team size and increasing our revenue by 40%. We're now looking forward to further growth and finally being able to work in the same office together again.”

The 2021 Wales Start-Up Awards 2021 awards will take place at the Depot in Cardiff in September with over 600 guests attending. Full information on how to enter this year’s awards can be found at www.walesstartupawards.com