Leading private equity firm and long-term NEF Fast Track supporter, CVC Capital Partners, have announced the winners of their annual Young Innovators Awards. The £40,000 in grant funding recognises the most-promising new businesses founded by NEF Fast Track alumni and will be shared among the winners to help ramp up the growth of their ventures.

The winning businesses:
Emily Harper, Art-K – aims to increase children’s access to art. Already running 22 art classes in the UK, it was started to fill the need for supplemental art programmes given the decline in arts teaching in schools.

Maud Millar, Adapt – the first ‘intelligent’ revision timetable that actually works for students – giving them a prioritised list of tasks designed for them by subject specialists, and automatically adjusting their timetable each day to reflect on what they did (or maybe didn’t) get done.

Judy Marsden, Director of Philanthropy at CVC said: “We launched the CVC Young Innovator Awards five years ago to give young entrepreneurs early-stage funding to kick start their businesses. Both Art-K and Adapt are worthy winners and we look forward to supporting them over the next year through cash grants and access to CVC’s resources and network”