A final year student from the Business Information Systems BSc Honours course has been shortlisted as a finalist for the Mayor’s Entrepreneur Programme 2020.
Alexandr Zhexembayev’s company has been chosen as one of the five finalists for the Smart Cities Award which aims to discover technological innovations to improve life and work in London. Grocemania, the company that he co-founded with Askar Bulegenov, was chosen for the award.
Grocemania is an online grocery delivery business with a total of 110 live stores in London, Brighton and Bristol. Their vision is to support local grocery stores. The company provides the shop with a free tablet, drivers, marketing materials and publications, and account management. This is how they differentiate from competitors like UberEats, Deliveroo and Amazon.
The purpose of the Mayor’s Entrepreneur Programme is to find business ideas developed by students to help London grow in a cleaner, greener and innovative way. It also aims to ensure that students can develop and gain the skills they need to succeed.
There are four award categories: the creative industries award, environment award, health award and the smart cities award. The semi-finalists submitted their work and the judges chose the top five for each category. The winner of each award will win a cash prize of £20,000. Due to restrictions around the Coronavirus pandemic, the finals will take place virtually.
Speaking on the award, Zhexembayev said: “We are very happy that the UK government supports businesses like ours through different programmes, schemes and grants. Being selected as a finalist gives us a warm feeling that we are doing the right thing and bringing value to the development of big cities in the UK. We plan to use the funds as the booster for scaling up to 32 major cities in the UK and for marketing activities to attract new customers to our incredible platform.”
Learn about Computer Science and Engineering courses offered at the University of Westminster.
