A WINNER of the Duke of York Young Entrepreneur Award is hoping for further recognition as he enters his venture for the New Business of the Year title.

Thirsti is a hydration focussed start-up aiming to take on wearable health monitor giants Fitbit and Apple.

Thirsti’s flagship product, the Puck, claims to be the world’s first personal hydration coach, a device which works out when you are likely to become dehydrated and then stops it happening, by reminding you to drink.

Founded by Phil Daneshyar during his second year of study at the University of York in 2016, the company has gone on to raise more than £130,000 of investment, pre-sold 2000 units to a UK distributor and secured a US patent on its technology.

The Puck sits in the bottom of your drinks bottle and connects to the thirsti App. The App works out how much you should drink based on your personal metrics. The Pucks then tracks what you drink throughout the day, when the two become out of sync, the Puck will glow in your water bottle and the app will send a fun notification to your phone.

Thirsti identified a gap in the wearables/health tech market for hydration tracking products and saw that there was clear demand for such products, after noting the success of competitor US based products on crowdfunding platforms.

Mr Daneshyar said: "This September we officially launch in the market. In order to do this, Thirsti has more than 50 UK based fitness, food and health bloggers, with a combined social media reach of more than 600,000 followers, on board to review the product when it launches.

"Moreover, using contacts at papers such as the Times and Guardian, we aim to target high profile product reviews around launch time."

Thirsti is in talks with retailers such as Boots, John Lewis and Dixon’s Travel about potential stocking for the Christmas period. With aims to be stocked in the Apple store for Spring 2018.

Mr Daneshyar added: "Our technology is versatile and we expect to launch our second product in early 2018 in the children’s smart hydration market."