Former Trinity student and owner of Change Please named ‘StartUp of the Year’ by Richard Branson

Trinity alumnus Cemal Ezel, founder of Change Please, has been named Richard Branson’s ‘start-up of the year’.

Part funded by Virgin StartUp, Cemal founded the company in 2015, training homeless people to be baristas and providing them with solar-powered coffee carts to trade from. Cemal has been praised for the work he has done helping members of the homeless community get back on their feet.

The company has grown from strength to strength, with 33 Change Please sites in the UK, and 84 people being employed and housed; hundreds more have also been provided with training. In addition, the coffee is available in supermarkets and will soon be launched at three sites in New York.

Awards and recognition are not new to Cemal, who was previously awarded Lloyds Bank Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2017, and Change Please was named one of the ‘Top 100 most disruptive brands in the world’ by Marketing Week in 2017.

Congratulations to Cemal and the Change Please team, we wish them continued success with this great venture!