Fortune favours the bravest

Hail the unsung heroes

The LDC Top 50 are not just creating jobs, they are creating high-value roles where people can develop and thrive. Ram Gupta, founder of IT specialist Nybble, believes that everyone deserves a chance to forge a fulfilling career. He goes beyond simply offering apprenticeships and opportunities for career switchers; he actively recruits homeless people and former offenders, giving them the opportunity to change their future.

Staff are given many perks, from birthdays off to time for volunteering, which means retention at the 100-strong company is high. “It’s great to have a strong balance sheet but that’s not the only measure of success,” Gupta adds. “For me, it’s about seeing our people grow and develop.”

Jo Tutchener Sharp’s purpose became clear to her following a serious illness in 2016. “I spent a lot of time looking back over my life and thinking, have I done enough good and helped enough people?” Once fully recovered, she set up clothing brand Scamp & Dude. Having been separated from her own children during her treatment, she wanted to create a toy and clothing line that would provide comfort and hope. The brand’s signature lightning bolt features on all its items. “It’s something you can press to get your superpowers.”

With seven stores across the country and a further five or six planned to open over the next 12 months, Tutchener Sharp has branched into adult clothing too. She came up with the idea for Super Scarves, “a comfort blanket” to donate to women starting chemotherapy. “We’ve now donated 52,750 scarves and we’ve got contacts with over 250 hospitals in the UK.”

Resilience, disruption and vision

The LDC Top 50 leaders prove that ambition isn’t simply about having a goal. It requires courage, the willingness to “stick it out”, the ability to disrupt markets and to find that opportunity others can’t see. Take Charlotte Ali and her husband Sean, who founded their superfood powder brand, Rheal, online in 2017. It arose from their determination to find foods to help Charlotte manage coeliac disease. Revenues are now £28 million; they even made TV history after becoming the first pitchers on Dragons’ Den to have all the Dragons wanting to invest the sum they’d asked for.

The pair have overcome many challenges while carving out their new niche in the wellness sector. In 2018, Sean was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. “It was our second year in business and I had to go through six months of treatment. I was bedbound for a week after every chemo session. But that just motivated me even more to spread the message of healthy living.”

For Gary Gallen, founder of Yorkshire-based specialist legal firm rradar, his sector-disrupting approach was inspired by righting a wrong, in more ways than one. “In my career, I prosecuted people, defended and tried to protect – I got frustrated only helping people when there was already a crisis.” So he set up a practice that didn’t simply offer businesses advice for a fee: rradar was built around education. Gallen aims to coach firms to act before challenges become problems – and to stop them ending up in court.

The LDC Top 50 leaders prove that, with the right person at the helm, growth can be achieved whatever the sector or trading conditions. Adam Jones launched restaurant business Permanently Unique without much hospitality experience. “I was supposed to become a solicitor,” he says. His creative flair and ambition saw the firm thrive. It now has 800 staff.

He and his brother Drew have expanded the company into seven unique, Instagrammable sites: five premium Asian restaurants under the TATTU brand; and two sister sites, Fenix, a Greek-Mediterranean concept, and Louis, serving Italian American cuisine. And there are plans to launch in Dubai and the US. “It’s a challenging industry – you’re always working when everyone else is having fun. But I love it.”

These leaders are growing their businesses through a combination of ambition and offering in-demand products and services. Amy Knight started her business Must Have Ideas from her spare room in 2018. She spotted a gap in the market for cleaning products and gadgets that consumers wanted but might not find in big supermarkets – from skirting board mops and four-in-one garden clear-up tools to mould busters. “My husband, my business partner and I each invested £1,000 and bought 1,000 boxes of sponges. We launched our ads one morning and sold our first order by midday. We’d sold out in a couple of weeks.” The goal is to double revenue to £100 million and become a household name.

Of The LDC Top 50 leaders, 30 are exporters, excelling on the world stage. Many generate more than half their revenues outside the UK. Fatih Haltas’s gaming company, Matchingham Games, has gone beyond that, reaching 10 per cent of all smartphone users globally. Rather than just youngsters, his games are aimed at all age groups and designed to keep the mind sharp.

With 700 million downloads, the firm competes with industry giants such as Candy Crush maker King. “This is the beauty of the gaming industry,” Haltas says. “You can be based in the UK and sell to China the next day. I wanted to be in an industry where I could build a unicorn. We’re on course now to turn over £50 million with fewer than 200 people.”

Flexible futures

As diverse a set of individuals as The LDC Top 50 are, they have one thing in common – the drive to succeed and make a difference in tough times. “These dynamic business leaders showcase the breadth of entrepreneurial talent across the UK,” says LDC’s Garner. “We hope that by celebrating their achievements, we can inspire others. These leaders had the confidence to seize an opportunity, take a risk, build a talented team, and set a course with purpose, vision and ambition. It’s been a challenging few years for British businesses, but, as The LDC Top 50 business leaders continue to prove, it can be done.”