Matthew Rusk Student Entrepreneur in Residence

For the third in my series of progress updates on University of Exeter students who run businesses I met up with Charley Allen, a fourth year French, Spanish and Philosophy student, who has created a business designed to reduce the costs of transport for uni students. The idea came to Charley during her year abroad as she frequently made the most of car sharing websites like BlaBlaCar to travel throughout France and Spain. Yet, she noticed that at this time there was no similar businesses offering this type of car sharing within the UK.

Why not carshare?

By the time she had returned to England BlaBlaCar had launched within the UK, however, there was still a massive opportunity to create a car-sharing website aimed exclusively at students – this is how UniCoRide was born! Charley along with some fellow students started to undertake market research for the concept, using her business idea in a fictitious business competition for a module on her Spanish course. The business idea won the competition further encouraging Charley to take this project on as an actual business. As of 2014 Charley is now undertaking further market research, looking to develop and launch her UniCoRide website over the next few months, as well as to continue her application to the Student Green Unit which give out around £25,000 to empower our students to make a difference in environmental and ethical issues. Charley is also currently running a questionnaire for students – if you are interested in taking part click here to carry out the survey during 2014!

In terms of business at MGR Music this week has seen us expand by creating Piano Lessons Liverpool and Piano Lessons Cambridge, as well as creating Singing Lessons Bournemouth, but still to hire teachers in these locations. On the hiring front proud to say that we have successfully recruited two new teachers this week, Frank Lucas who will become the Guitar Lessons Swindon guitar teacher, and Pete Hicks who has taken over the Guitar Lessons Milton Keynes website. We have also been working on an entry into a new sector of the music tuition industry over the next few weeks which is going to represent the first major change in the business for around 12 months. All will be revealed next week!

Connect with Matthew via LinkedIn or check out his latest business idea: a monthly whisky subscription in the UK to see how he is continuing to develop new start-ups.

Posted under Progress Update, UniCoRide