University of Sunderland masters student Richard Pearce is today (Friday, Nov 17) celebrating after being awarded second prize in the UK Science & Enterprise Challenge (UKSEC) Business Planning Competition.
Richard’s new company Qclassics.com beat off strong competition from enterprising students from 18 other UK Universities, which included Oxford and the London Business School, to claim the prize.
Qclassics.com is the world’s first online talking-books store for the lesbian and gay community, and aims to build a high-quality audio archive of fiction and non-fiction material available to buy through the website.
The winners were announced last night in Sheffield at UKSEC’s Gala Dinner. Richard wins £5,000 of in-kind support from the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts (NESTA) and £500 of intellectual property patenting advice from patent Marks & Clerks.
Richard said: “This is great news and should help the business grow and develop more quickly. I intend to use the £5,000 structured mentoring support to develop a strategic vision for building my archive and I’ll use the £500 patenting support to assist with registering my trademark.”
Richard’s business idea has already won a NESTA scholarship at Creativitiworks, the university's creative business incubator and he was the winner of Codeworks Digital Media Award in Sunderland’s Blueprint Business Planning Competition in 2006.
This is the first year that the University of Sunderland has entered the UKSEC competition.
Julia Macfarlane, who manages St Peter’s Gate, the university managed business incubator, said: “We have worked closely with Richard over the past 12 months to turn his business idea into a reality, and we are delighted that all the hard work has paid off.”