smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

Founder of insurance comparison website Confused.com, Sara Murray set up GPS tracking device company Buddi which is due to hit a turnover of £4 million

How did you come up with the idea?

After my daughter went missing in the supermarket, it made me start thinking about how GPS was a useful tool for people in trouble.
So I learnt a lot about it from scratch and then developed a prototype.

How does the product work?

We have three main types of people it can be used for: vulnerable children, vulnerable elderly, and lone workers. The first two categories are for if you need to find someone. You can then track them online or text or call our emergency response service to locate them. For the loan worker category, if they are in trouble it had a panic button on it, which will alert the emergency response centre.

Where did you get the funding from?

I put £200,000 of my own money into the product after having sold Confused.com and got a further £1 million from business angels and private investors. We may also be looking for more funding in February depending on our overseas plans.

How did you market it?

Mainly using PR. We didn’t do a lot of marketing because the product is so revolutionary for people with dementia, so there was a lot of media attention surrounding that area anyway.

Where next?

We’ve had a lot of interest from the US and we have just finished a week of trials in South Africa. We’ve also had interest in South East Asia and South America. I’d also like to develop the product into other aspects of tracking. For example, sending parcels and using it to monitor kids in shopping centres.