daisy CEO Matthew Riley has been awarded a £5m war-chest after triumphing in a real-life Dragon’s Den.

The UK’s young entrepreneur of the year and owner of Lancashire-based daisy, was handed £5m after winning the Northern Final of The Bank of Scotland Corporate Entrepreneur Challenge.

The windfall means daisy has received a funding package which is free of interest and arrangement fees for a period of three years, money the firm plans to use to fund acquisitions to grow the business.

daisy is one of the UK’s leading independent companies for telephone, mobile, data and broadband, providing communications solutions to small-medium sized businesses. The company has experienced phenomenal growth since its inception in 2001, recently being named in Deloitte’s Fast 50 chart of a rate of growth of 8021% over the last five years.

The company now looks set to continue in that vein, and this latest accolade means daisy can drive towards its target of becoming largest independent telecoms reseller in the UK, with revenue forecast to be in excess of £200m within two years.

Riley said: “Winning Entrepreneur Challenge means daisy can now pursue its ambition of becoming the UK’s main alternative to BT in the business communications landscape.

“It’s always been our ambition to continue the company’s growth, but the £5m interest free funding means we can finance further acquisitions and look to reach that goal quicker.”

The business’s early growth was driven solely by organic expansion, but in the last two years daisy has pursued a strategy of consolidating the fragmented telecom reseller market through acquisitions as well as organic growth.

Since August 2005 the company has acquired five businesses and six customer databases.

The company’s finance director Matt Peters said: “We have a strong pipeline of potential acquisition targets as vendors are looking to extract cash prior to the increases in capital gains from April next year.

“Bank of Scotland is not only giving access to £5m of free funding but it has also bought into our longer term strategy to be at the forefront of consolidation in our market. We are looking forward to working together with them to deliver our plans.”

daisy was established Riley’s home town of Nelson six years ago with just three employees. The company now operates from a 20,000sq ft state of the art office complex and employees more than 130 people.