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A company founded by Newry woman Georgia Heaney and her partner James Kirwan from Dublin has won €50,000 in an InterTrade Ireland competition. Their company Breadly was a winner at the InterTrade Ireland NI regional final of its Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition. The all-island final takes place on 12 November.
Breadly is a personal finance assistant that uses AI to help people with their money and take financial admin off their hands. Users can ask it to cancel an unwanted subscription or switch their energy provider, and it does the work for them, with their permission. Beta testers have already cancelled £5,000 worth of subscriptions with its help.
Heaney said the win meant a lot to the couple who have been together over seven years. “Winning €50,000 at the Northern Ireland B2C regional final of InterTradeIreland’s Seedcorn competition meant so much to us,” she said. “We’ve been preparing for almost six months now, with the all-island final coming up next week on 12 November. There have been plenty of late nights getting ready, so we’re excited to see how it goes!”
She added: “We’re passionate about helping people save money without giving up the things they love, by finding savings they didn’t know were available to them and doing the admin so they can actually benefit from them. We’re absolutely thrilled to win this award and see our ambition and hard work recognised, and we’re so grateful to our wider team and support networks, with a huge thank you to InterTradeIreland for the opportunity and support throughout Seedcorn.”
The idea for the business came from the couple’s time in Australia. Heaney said: “A lot of the idea came from our time in Australia. Moving to a new country was exciting, but trying to get our heads around taxes and our finances was stressful. We didn’t always know what we were entitled to or whether we were missing out on something simply because we didn’t know to ask. James is an accountant and we still found it difficult, so we knew plenty of other people must be feeling the same.”
Money has also had a big impact on Kirwan’s own life. He was forced to drop out of university because he could not afford to stay. He took a job as an accounts assistant, went to night classes to become a chartered accountant and eventually worked his way up to a Financial Controller position in Australia.
Heaney said they wanted to bring the business home. “We wanted to bring Breadly home and build it on the island of Ireland to help people here and across the UK. I’m from Newry and James is from Dublin, so there’s something really special about getting to build this at home together.”
She said the tasks Breadly takes on are ones people put off. “These are jobs people put off because they’re busy or don’t know where to start, even when sorting them could make a real difference". She concluded: "Our goal is to save people across Ireland and the UK over £100 million. That’s what we’re working towards, and it’s lovely seeing it start to make a difference for people already.”
Check the business out on www.getbreadly.com
