Oneday picks £2.5 million to support entrepreneurs turn their passion into business

According to Google’s most recent report, 2021 was the year the world searched for “how to start a business” more than “how to get a job” for the first time. With the pandemic, an ever-increasing number of people jumped on to the entrepreneurship bandwagon. 

Supporting this new segment of aspiring entrepreneurs with ready-to-launch ideas and matching them with wildly successful CEOs as mentors, a community of fellow founders, and all the content and tools they need to launch and fund their business is the need of the hour.

London-based edtech platform Oneday has raised £2.5 million in funding to help these entrepreneurs turn their passion into a business through expert-led coaching, community and content. The seed round was co-led by BrightEye VC and Outward VC with participation from Flint Capital, and angel investors, including Joshua Wohle, CEO at Mindstone and co-founder of SuperAwesome.

The fresh cash will be used to expand the team, accelerate product innovation and scale up growth. The startup had earlier secured £750,000 in pre-seed funding.

Co-founded by Ranbir Arora and Taras Polischuk, the platform is making entrepreneurship more accessible to everyone, irrespective of gender, ethnicity or background. According to the company, 51 percent of Oneday’s founders are female, whilst 56 percent are ethnic minorities.

The platform offers full membership at £249 per month to connect entrepreneurs with over 1,500 mentors.

Ranbir Arora, CEO and co-founder, Oneday, said: “Today, the careers that we aspire to are all within the passion economy; as people are sat in their cubicles in large corporations, they’re saying ‘One day I’m going to launch my own makeup line, one day I’m going to launch my own music label, one day I’m going to become a YouTuber.

For corporate career paths, we have this massive higher education system that helps people get those careers. But nothing exists that helps get people into these passion economy careers that they dream of. That’s why we created Oneday, so we can help everyone create lives and careers that they love.”

Greg Smith MP, co-chair, Free Market Forum said: “Following the 2008 financial crisis, a huge part of our economic recovery was down to individuals taking a risk, being entrepreneurial and starting new ventures.  We need that same spirit to grow the U.K. economy following the damage Covid restrictions wreaked. The ambition for a million new businesses by 2025 needs to be encouraged.”