Local entrepreneurs behind voucher codes startup Pouch have been busy building on their success since appearing on Dragons Den in August.

School friends Ben Corrigan, from Hampstead, and Jonny Plein, from Finchley, spent two and a half hours pitching their free-to-use browser extension to the Dragons, seeking an investment of £75,000 in exchange for 15% of the company.

Pouch is the UK’s first online shopping tool to sit in the browser and automatically source the best valid and available voucher codes for the user at the checkout page.

With an industry average of 75% of online shopping baskets being abandoned while users search for voucher codes, Pouch benefits both retailers and their customers.

Before Ben and Jonny appeared on Dragons Den, they had already forged relationships with 2,500 UK retailers over the course of just eight months.

Despite securing offers from all five Dragons, including tech mogul Peter Jones, the pair ended up not doing any of the deals. They felt the valuation of the business was too low and were unable to secure the time commitment they felt was needed to make it a success.

Instead, Ben and Jonny have capitalised on the attention Pouch received after the show. Pouch gained 70,000 new users and collected 150,000 email addresses in the ten days since the episode aired, and the duo have managed to secure around triple the investment they would have got from the Dragons.

Ben said: “It’s a shame that we didn’t end up making the deals with the Dragons, but going on the show was an amazing opportunity and a big professional risk that paid off. We’ve found it really easy to get investment and that’s down to our idea being simple, solving a real problem, and our model being really scaleable.”

He added: “The next steps for us now are to expand our team and develop a mobile version of Pouch, and to build on this momentum in the run-up to the lucrative Christmas period by partnering with more retailers.

“We plan to expand into Australia, France, Germany and perhaps the Nordic region by next year.”