'While Phizz flies at the front of the plane, I fly at the back'

DANIEL CRAY racked up a lot of frequent flyer miles working on sports advertising campaigns in his native Melbourne, Australia.

- Lucy Tobin

 

He'd be at an airport every month and it was on "a long-haul flight to London that left me feeling rubbish" that he came up with his idea for Phizz.

"I noticed the massive impact of putting your body through a flight; losing a litre of water every five hours onboard," says Cray, now 34 and living in Bermondsey. "It was a stark reminder of how dehydration depletes our energy, focus and overall health."

His concept was for a fizzy tablet full of vitamins and minerals that's added to water to hydrate the body. At the time, in 2014, Cray's boss in Australia had just given him the go-ahead to spin off his own start-up, using spare media space to champion artists from around the country. "That was on the Friday - then I came in on Monday morning and sheepishly said to my boss, 'scrap that project, I'm moving to London."" 

Cray flew here the following year with two co-founders, Rory Simmance-Freemantle and Jon Knight (one a childhood friend, the other a work contact); they had all quit their jobs and cobbled together £50,000 of savings between them: "that was everything we had - so we really needed Phizz to work, and to have something to sell, and fast."