Ahead of this weekend’s Sport Relief on BBC, Lawrence Dallaglio cycled more than 2000 miles across Europe to raise money for Sport Relief and the Dallaglio Foundation. The former England rugby captain used a buddi on his last leg across the UK so his friends and family could track his every pedal!

Dallagio, who began his long bike journey in Rome on 12 February, cycled into Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium at last Friday having visited each of the Six Nations stadiums en route during the month.

I was delighted to receive my award for BT Female Entrepreneur of the Year from Peter Jones on Wednesday night, having bumped into him at Daphne’s the previous evening.  I hadn’t realised he was quite so tall at 6 feet 7 inches, and now understand how he was an esteemed tennis player!

Sara with Peter Jones and Mick Hegarty, Strategy and Commercial Director, of BT Business.

I am very proud to have my photo displayed in the Oxo Gallery as Rankin did such a fantastic job of making me look polished – not easy for him when he’s used to photographing the likes of Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell.  I am also hoping he is going to buy a buddi – go on Rankin (or I’ll tell people your real name is John Waddell)!

Well done BT for sponsoring these awards, which encourage entrepreneurs to get out there and compete with the big boys – all good, and much needed for the future of the British Economy!

“2010 has got off to a great start as I am proud to announce that I have been awarded Best Female Entrepreneur in the BT Essence of the Entrepreneur Awards. The Awards recognise inspirational businesses in the UK that have harnessed technology in innovative ways to succeed.  I was among 20 winners selected by a panel of judges headed by Peter Jones from Dragons’ Den and Claire Young from The Apprentice.

As part of the prize I was photographed by Rankin, the fashion photographer, which was great fun.

I hope my Entrepreneur Awards are an inspiration to entrepreneurs everywhere – those days, which many entrepreneurs will recognise, where it feels as though you’ll never get there, when you just can’t speed up other people’s decisions very much – keep going!  It really is worth it!”

Well, what a great month it has been for buddi! After scooping the National Business Award for Entrepreneur of the Year two weeks ago, I was absolutely delighted to add to this by winning the CBI/Real Business Growing Business Award for Technology and Innovation on Thursday night.

We won the award against some very tough competition and what great recognition for all the hard work by the team here at buddi.  I think it’s fantastic that the judges – an esteemed group of successful businessmen, including Chairman of Ryman, Dragon Theo Paphitis, Phones4U Founder, John Caudwell and Founder of King of Shaves, Will King, recognised and chose to reward the work we are doing at buddi in keeping people with the growing problem of dementia in their own homes for longer, by improving their safety and reducing the stress on their carers.

I am particularly pleased to win an Innovation award as I believe that the work we have done at buddi is highly innovative, creating a totally new market, and delivering significant cost savings to cash-strapped local authorities.

A huge thank you to all the team and of course, to our fantastic customers!

Sara Murray with David Harrison, Head of Government Services team at Visa Europe, at the CBI/Real Business Growing Business Awards, held in London on 26th November, 2009

I am sitting in the lobby of Portcullis House waiting to talk to some Ministers about the benefits of using walking technologies in dementia.

It seems to me that the subject is increasingly cropping up in the media. It won’t surprise you to hear that this condition is expected to quadruple in the next 40 years.  The total number of residential care beds now is half the number which will be needed for dementia alone in 30 years time.  We worry so much about cancer, but this condition is going to blight most of our lives. Let’s hope government can make some real decisions in this area before they are forced.

Well last night was certainly a turn up for the books. I am delighted to have won the National Business Awards Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

It’s extremely hard to build a business in hardware technology never mind with the added twist of radio electronics, which is quite rightly dubbed a “black art”.

Gaining recognition for the work buddi is doing in improving the lives of those with dementia and their carers is really motivating!

Being an entrepreneur requires you to worry about 100 things at a time, sweat the small stuff while having an overarching vision. It’s a daily struggle with unexpected events mingled with good and bad surprises, so it feels really great when others recognise what an achievement keeping going can be.

Thank you to everyone who made this possible for me!

Sara being awarded the Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Maggie Choo, Director, EMEA, Alibaba.com (Europe) and Kirsty Wark, the BBC Newsnight presenter and Awards host

At the Innovate09 dinner last week, I was pleased to meet the Chief Executive of Birmingham East and North NHS Foundation Trust. I was so impressed to meet a public servant who is the antithesis of the public view of NHS leaders. She is a very bright, dynamic, determined and visionary leader, using data-driven methods for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare in her Trust. She extolled a version of 21st century healthcare (her phrase) which allows people more care in the home, where they want it, at lower cost to the taxpayer – everyone wins!

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In Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Thames Valley Police have teamed up with the local council in a program which sees buddi being used to help domestic abuse victims. They are only a press of a button away from alerting the police if they need to. These women are immensely brave and working on this project has just served to remind me what hardship many people have to endure – and how lucky most of us are not to be victims.

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Last month I was very pleased to be announced as one of 20 winners in the BT “Essence of the Entrepreneur” Business Awards. As part of this, all the winners were asked to take part in a photo shoot by the photographer Rankin. It was a great fun and the pictures are being exhibited at the Oxo gallery in London in the New Year. However, I hope to get a sneak preview beforehand so watch this space as we’ll be posting them online soon!

National Business Awards (Neil Pamplin Client Services Director Grant Thornton, Sara Murray and Host Katie Derham ITV)

This is the first of my regular blogs, which I hope first time visitors and regular customers to the buddi website will enjoy reading and find informative.

We’re kicking off with some great news, which is that on Tuesday night I won the Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the South of England at the National Business Awards.  Dubbed the “Oscars of the business world”, the ceremony took place at the Hilton Park Lane Hotel in London, with the newsreader Katie Derham hosting the evening’s celebrations.

I am really delighted to win. We beat a number of other great companies from across the South of the UK and it is a great testament to the effort the buddi team has put in over the last three years. We’re still only a small company – one of the other finalists nominated was the head of a company with an annual turnover of £35million – so we are obviously doing something right!

It is a really exciting time for buddi at the moment. We are working with councils, NHS Trusts and businesses across the UK and abroad, with many groups of vulnerable people now benefiting from buddi, including lone workers, doctors and midwives, those suffering from dementia and parents with young children. Keep coming back to read more about all these developments over the coming months.

We are really proud of buddi and being recognised in this way really makes all the effort worthwhile. We are now in the National finals of the Entrepreneur of the Year awards to be held in November, so watch this space!

Sara Murray, Founder and Managing Director of buddi

buddi founder Sara Murray’s work began with an incident in a supermarket when her young daughter went missing.
As she frantically searched for her, the security men hunting for the child told her to stand at the car park exit and look into the cars as they left.

Sara describes this as the scariest moment of her life. All she could think of was of her child’s safety.

The following year she and her daughter were on a skiing holiday and she was asked by the ski instructor to write her name and telephone number on a piece of paper and place it in her daughter’s pocket in case of an emergency – she couldn’t believe that in today’s world there wasn’t a more sophisticated personal safety device for ensuring her child’s safety.

Her knowledge of GPS technology, experience in building start-up electronic and internet businesses, combined with her personal experience, launched her on a mission to find the solution. The outcome was buddi – a GPS personal tracker with emergency support.