Natasha Ann Bates, a first year student at Buckinghamshire College Group in Amersham, has been crowned the Peter Jones Young Entrepreneur of the Year for 2019.
She received her national accolade after a gruelling ‘Dragon’s Den’ presentation in front of a panel of distinguished business leaders and entrepreneurs chaired by Peter Jones.
Hosted by the University of Buckingham at ‘EntFest’, the day-long celebration of innovation in business brought together three other finalists, all of whom had come through several qualifying rounds to reach the last stage.
Natasha’s prize is £5,000 of investment in her business idea from the Peter Jones Foundation, plus a full scholarship to Buckingham University’s Batchelor Degree course in business and innovation.
Natasha, a lifelong dyslexic, has developed a reading aid for children and young adults that enables many dyslexic sufferers to read ordinary text much more easily than before. Her product, EasyRead, takes clinically proven principles and incorporates them into a simple-to-use tool that can be used to help young people with reading difficulties to integrate better with the world around them.
