Cirencester Sixth Form College’s Young Enterprise students have traditionally worked extremely well together and have shown exceptional entrepreneurial skills over recent years. So it ought to be no surprise that one team, find ‘SoberDrive’ has won the Young Enterprise Hyundai Skills for the Future UK Finals, which has put them through to the European Finals in Prague.
SoberDrive, who have been sponsored by Hyundai, which not only gave them the benefit of an exceptional mentor Enzo Scognamiglio, Fleet Operations Manager at Hyundai Motor UK but also some used tyres and a brilliant trip to the Hyundai headquarters in High Wycombe. All this gave SoberDrive, the opportunity of being entered into an additional competition this week, which runs alongside the main Young Enterprise competition.
SoberDrive were invited to participate in the Young Enterprise Hyundai Skills for the Future Nationals Finals held at the company’s training academy in High Wycombe. The team presented their business to a panel of judges made up of Tony Whitehorn CEO Hyundai UK of Hyundai, Kenny Hwang CEO Co-ordinator Hyundai Motor UK, Andrew Cullis Marketing Director Hyundai, and Phillip Perera and Omar Farag owners of PHOM Tea Company (previous winners of Hyundai Skills for the Future Funding and Dragons Den winners).
Hannah Clark, Innovation and Enterprise Manager explained, “This for many students would seem a daunting task, but SoberDrive are no normal Young Enterprise team. They are a slick and polished outfit who know their business inside and out and as a result were able to give a confident pitch to the panel followed by some very well fielded answers in the Q&A that followed.”
The response from the judges was that the SoberDrive business idea is totally unique and innovative and they were impressed by the way they presented themselves and worked as a team. In fact the judges were blown away by the technical know-how of the students, in particular Sam Roberts who has manufactured their prototype by hand. The SoberDrive product is already Patent Pending and is a truly innovative product, which should help save lives and reduce drink-driving related incidents. This showed the judges how serious they are about taking the company forward when the Young Enterprise experience is over.
After a nerve wracking wait while the judges deliberated SoberDrive were crowned winners of the UK National Finals with Tony Whitehorn presenting them with their trophy, a Kindle each and of course the all-important pass to the European Finals which take place in Prague in June.
Hannah Clark added “It is a real honour for the college that one of our Young Enterprise teams gets to represent the UK in the European Finals in June. SoberDrive were incredibly impressive today and I watched on with a great deal of pride at how far they have come in such a short space of time. Many thanks to Enzo and Hyundai for this opportunity and I look forward to working with Enzo again next year. However before that we have our biggest competition to date to prepare for and I know the students are up for the challenge”.
George Kershaw Houghton MD of SoberDrive said “Young Enterprise has been an invaluable experience for us all gaining us real world experience of the business environment. Winning the UK National Finals was very rewarding and we look forward to representing the UK in Europe. I would highly recommend the Young Enterprise experience for not only aspiring entrepreneurs but for people interested in the technical aspects of new products and those interested in business in general. Keep up to date with developments in our business on our twitter page @SoberDriveUK.”