East Midlands Trains, part of the Stagecoach Group, has announced it will be sponsoring the UK’s first ever major gathering of entrepreneurs at this September’s MADE Festival in Sheffield. 

As part of the sponsorship package, East Midlands Trains will be running an ‘Entrepreneurs Express’ between London and Sheffield, to deliver leading entrepreneurs and international diplomats to the festival.  On route to Sheffield, the entrepreneurs will have an opportunity to experience East Midlands Trains’ fast and reliable train service, and will even be able to work more efficiently on board, courtesy of the company’s newly launched WiFi.

The MADE Festival, which is the UK’s first major gathering of entrepreneurs, will take place from 8-11 September in Sheffield.  The festival programme includes a headline training session from former TV Dragon Doug Richard, aiming to boost the ‘digital potential’ of 300 businesses by helping them grow their business online.

The festival will also include the launch of Sheffield’s National Enterprise Academy with Dragon Peter Jones, international speaker events and an entertaining talk from Rachel Bridge, the Enterprise Editor of the Sunday Times on getting to know real life entrepreneurs.

East Midlands Trains is becoming well known for its innovative approach to providing greener, smarter travel for its passengers and is pleased to be supporting this year’s MADE Festival.  Jayne Moyses, Sales Manager for East Midlands Trains, explains: “We’re constantly coming up with new ideas to deliver improvements for our passengers, and in the last month have launched on board WiFi and developed an initiative to run even greener trains.

“It therefore seemed very appropriate for East Midlands Trains – a company committed to developing new ideas – to be supporting a festival designed for entrepreneurs.  We’re very excited about the festival, in particular having the opportunity to transport a selection of the UK’s finest entrepreneurs to Sheffield on our fast, efficient and reliable train services.”

Brian Souter, Chief Executive of Stagecoach Group, who this year received the Scotland Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and has been hailed as a true global entrepreneur, added:  “New ideas and new businesses are the engine room of the economy. We hope our support for the entrepreneurs’ festival will give people access to some of Britain’s best business brains to help their companies grow and have a successful future.”

Brendan Moffett, Director of Strategic Marketing at Creativesheffield, said: “The Entrepreneur Express is a unique way of East Midlands Trains supporting MADE: The Entrepreneur Festival. Gathering this number of leading entrepreneurs together is a unique opportunity for Sheffield to mark itself out as a home for enterprise and with connections to London in just two hours it is clear the city means business.”