THE ENTREPRENEURS

The Entrepreneurs  Oisin Hanrahan, Handy (Photo Credit - Richie Stokes) Image Name: The Entrepreneurs Oisin Hanrahan, Handy (Photo Credit - Richie Stokes)
The Entrepreneurs  Mark Roden, Ding (Photo Credit - Richie Stokes) Image Name: The Entrepreneurs Mark Roden, Ding (Photo Credit - Richie Stokes)
The Entrepreneurs Stuart Dobson - Elmgrove Foods (Photo Credit - Richie Stokes) Image Name: The Entrepreneurs Stuart Dobson - Elmgrove Foods (Photo Credit - Richie Stokes)

Programme 3 

EY Entrepreneur Of The Year presents The Entrepreneurs – a new documentary series that goes deep into the personal stories behind many of Ireland’s top entrepreneurs.

Opening on the buzzing streets of Manhattan, we follow Oisin Hanrahan, founder of Handy (formerly Handybook), as he navigates the aggressive growth of his rapidly expanding tech startup across the US & Europe. Clocking over 10,000 bookings a week, Handy is making “insanely fast” strides in the trillion-dollar home services market and we join Oisin and his co-founder Umang as they search for office space to fit their growing team and grapple with the challenges of quality control and talent recruitment in a truly people-focused business.

Then it’s on to Co. Tyrone where we meet Stuart Dobson, the mastermind turning abattoir wastage into a multi-million euro business, Elmgrove Foods.  Not for the faint-hearted, Stuart invites us to sample the latest in lesser-known “offal” cuisine from cow placenta to “paddywhacks”, sharing how he broke away from the family business, Dunbia, to pave his own path in the food industry with his “off the wall” idea.

We then meet Mark Roden, the CEO of mobile top-up giant Ding, as he candidly discusses bouncing back from significant knock-backs, balancing business demands with a young family and the lessons he learnt along the way.  Mark opens up about his greatest failure in business and shares the profound impact this had on the creation of Ding – a business that is built around facilitating human connections around the world, processing over €1million in payment top-ups daily from Nigeria to Paraguay and everywhere in between.

The featured entrepreneurs are all shortlisted for this year’s EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Award.

Series Overview

From the poster boys of Ireland’s erupting tech scene to the heavyweights excelling in global and domestic markets, EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ brings you The Entrepreneurs – an all-new documentary series that follows a number Ireland’s most successful entrepreneurs as they overcome fear, failure and adversity in pursuit of their ambitious visions.

Kicking off on Monday 29 September at 8.30pm, the four-part RTE ONe series will air every Monday until 20 October.  The series continues online each week with web exclusive content available on RTE Player and social media featuring personal business advice from this year’s EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ finalists.  Viewers can join the online conversation using the hashtag #EOY2014 or by visiting eoy.ie.