About Hugo Tilmouth

Hugo Croft Tilmouth was born in 1995. He studied Renewable Energy at the University of Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall, graduating in 2017. The idea that became ChargedUp started while he was a student there.

The premise was simple: people run out of phone battery in exactly the places they are already spending money — bars, cafés, restaurants, stadiums and stations — and nobody wants to sit next to a wall socket to fix it. ChargedUp put charging stations in venues so that a customer can tap to rent a portable battery, keep using their phone while it charges, and drop it back at any other station in the network. The BBC described it as “the Boris Bike of phone charging”.

Hugo and his co-founders incorporated the business as Innovate Energy Solutions Ltd in April 2017, trading as ChargedUp. He has been a director since the day it was incorporated and leads the company as Chief Executive Officer.

Building the network

ChargedUp launched across London and grew quickly. In February 2019 TechCrunch reported a £1.2 million seed round led by The Garage, the fund of advertising figure Sir John Hegarty, alongside JamJar, the fund founded by the Innocent Drinks founders. The company was also backed by Founders Factory and Shell.

That same month, Hugo and co-founder Hakeem Buge were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list in the Social Entrepreneurs category. The University of Exeter covered the recognition of its graduates. In 2020 ChargedUp was ranked 52nd in the Startups 100.

The pandemic pivot

In March 2020 the venues ChargedUp depended on closed overnight. Within about a week the team launched CleanedUp, redirecting the same manufacturing and venue network to produce and distribute hand sanitiser stations. Founders Factory documented the pivot, which reached tens of thousands of dispensers across UK venues. CleanedUp went on to partner with Dettol, part of Reckitt, and to supply Transport for London.

ServedUp and theUp.co

As hospitality reopened in 2021 the group added ServedUp, a venue operator platform with order-and-pay for customers, and brought its businesses together under a parent company, theUp.co. In January 2022 BusinessCloud reported a £7 million round for the group, joined by Tom Blomfield, the former Monzo chief executive, alongside Jägermeister and JamJar Investments. At the time the group described serving more than 35,000 venues across Europe.

The brands were subsequently consolidated under the ChargedUp name, and theUp.co now redirects to the ChargedUp website.

Today

By the company’s own published figures ChargedUp now operates in five countries and around 3,000 venues, has served roughly 2.5 million users, and has delivered more than 500 million minutes of charge. Hugo remains its Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and is based in London.