Start-up stories: Meet Henrietta and Yuvi

For most students, university is a balancing act of lectures, deadlines, social lives, and trying to survive until the next maintenance loan. For some, there’s another item on the list: starting a business.

We interviewed two students at Newcastle University who have successfully started their own businesses, whilst still juggling their studies.

Henrietta Newble – AnFiTest

Henrietta is in her second year, and is an Arkwright engineering scholar who has founded AnFiTest, a precision diagnostic start-up developing preventative health testing for animals.

The company originated from her own personal experiences, growing up with horses on a farm in Cambridgeshire. Henrietta competed at national level in showjumping before a riding accident that ended her competitive career at 16. She watched her own pony, Crumbs, nearly die of equine laminitis — a life-threatening hoof condition that affects one in ten horses each year and has no cure, only long term management.

Laminitis is closely linked to the chemical content of pasture grass, and Henrietta explained how she wondered why we were not testing grass, instead of waiting for animals to present with an illness.

Observing this gap, she created a handheld device that measures the levels of chemicals in grass that are dangerous to horses.

The results feed into a software platform that combines them with other variables, including weather, soil type, and an animal’s health history, to generate an individual risk score and practical recommendations.

“Think of it like an NHS app, but for animals,” Henrietta explained.

She described how the long term ambition is to move beyond horses into livestock: “Vets’ software is really outdated, and your average owner doesn’t have access to that.”

The company is a year old and is preparing to raise £1.5 million next month, with £1 million already committed. Final prototypes are due by September, ahead of a planned go-to-market launch in May 2027. The team currently stands at three full time staff, with plans to grow to 10-15.

Henrietta credits Newcastle University’s START UP incubator with getting her through the earliest stages of the business, alongside subsidised lab space and ongoing support from the university’s business advisors.

Her advice to fellow student founders is to have a genuine personal connection to the problem, since “it  keep you motivated when you want to give up, but it is also really good for investors when you know the industry.”

However, she acknowledges the cost of building a company while studying, working up to 100 hours a week whilst still doing her second year exams. She pushes back against how entrepreneurship is often portrayed online, saying “social media has over-glamourised entrepreneurship…you have to make so many sacrifices.”

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Looking forward, Henrietta’s long term goal is to be leaders globally in at home testing, yet on a personal level, she hopes to make the Forbes 30 under 30 list.

Yuvi Chauhan – YJ Strategy

Yuvi Chauhan is a third year law student who founded the company YJ Strategy in 2025, which is the UK’s first AI native agentic strategy consulting company. This venture is the latest in a string of business projects, alongside completing a law degree and holding two committee positions in student societies.

Yuvi’s model centres on training a bespoke AI system on a client’s business, then providing it as an ongoing resource.

“My system is built with AI first. I train it on the company, and then I give the company access to it as an in-house consultant,” he explains.

His primary focus is legal firms, where he aims to automate internal processes, reduce costs and improve efficiency by moving beyond simple AI tools towards autonomous agents capable of handling multi-step tasks.

His interest in this field developed after training with the head of AI at StatusNeo in New Delhi. He had originally intended to pursue management consultancy, but saw an opportunity after learning that 40 per cent of McKinsey’s revenue was already generated by AI-related work. 

Yuvi credits his law degree with shaping his approach to business, explaining that “studying law has helped with problem solving and the analytical aspects of the job.” With AI becoming more widely accessible, he believes the ability to communicate effectively is increasingly what sets people apart.

 “Knowledge is now being democratised so information is now accessible to everyone, so it is not just about knowledge that matters but the way you can convey it to someone else and make them understand it.”

Reflecting on the graduate employment market, Yuvi predicts that in the short term, “hiring is going to freeze, and people will start finding different workloads and tasks.”

His advice to any future students wishing to start up their own businesses is understanding the difference between generating income and building a business.

“Building a business is finding a problem, creating a solution to that problem and then developing something that is scalable.”

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