A Newry-based company has set itself a mission of saving millions of pounds for clients, its founders driven by their own experiences and a purpose and passion to help others during difficult financial times.
Breadly – which was only launched in April 2025 – has already won €50,000 to help in its mission, having been named a winner in the biggest start-up business pitching competition on the island of Ireland.
The business was set up by Georgia Heaney, from Newry, and James Kirwan, from Dublin, who actually moved back from Australia to give it their all.
And already it has been proving itself not just useful, but essential, for those who have sought their help.
“Breadly finds ways for people to save money and then handles the admin behind actually getting the saving,” Georgia explained, taking time out for a chat with Armagh I.
“There’s a huge knowledge gap of people not knowing what to do to help improve their finances or they say it’s too burdensome to actually take action. This leaves millions of people in the UK and Ireland not taking any financial action, in particular young people.
“This is especially prevalent during the cost of living crisis, so Breadly wants to take away those barriers by telling you what you can do right now, without you having to know big financial principles, and then actually using its AI and automations to do the work for you to get you the savings.
“It can see if you’re overpaying for your utility bills and then switch them for you. It can show you all your subscriptions and cancel. And then, in the long term, we want to grow the wealth as well of our users.”
Both co-founders are well placed to deliver Breadly’s goals and help people hold on to that all-important dough!
And for James, he knows all too well, from personal experience, why it is so important to take action to save money where possible, having been forced to quit his studies at University College Dublin due to financial constraints.
“James is a chartered accountant and, essentially, when he was studying at university, he was forced to drop out because his family couldn’t afford for him to stay,” said Georgia.
“He basically got a job at the bottom of a financial firm, as an assistant accountant, and then took night classes to become a chartered accountant over many years. And so personal finance is very deeply important to him because of what happened to his family.
“Recently, they’ve actually had to relocate to Spain to retire, because they couldn’t afford to retire in Dublin.
“We see a lot of people around us in Ireland who are finding it hard with the cost of living, and there’s tangible ways to save money right now that they just don’t know of, or the building blocks to help them with their future in the long term.
“So we thought that we should create a solution to help people reach savings immediately and then also work towards their long-term financial goals.
“I come from a growth strategy consulting background. I worked with large private equity-backed companies or subsidiaries of large companies to basically grow their businesses. These are, you could call them, scale-up companies.
“I worked with them to get them more customers, get more revenue, so I come from the growth background, and I’m helping growth, and James has the financial domain expertise, and we’ve a fantastic board of advisors.”
Georgia and James relocated back to Ireland from Australia around Christmas time last year with the ambition of establishing and growing Breadley.
And again, experiences Down Under, for them and others, drove them home on a must-do mission.
“I was there on a visa and, actually, we noticed that we were getting overtaxed in Australia,” added Georgia, “and also our pension wasn’t set up the best way and it was all because of things we didn’t know about.
“So again, that knowledge barrier, and all of our friends, Irish people living in Australia, they also were in this new financial situation there that they didn’t understand and were making the same mistakes.
“We saw that huge problem and we decided that we wanted to build something to help them, we wanted to start in our home market and help the people locally, so we decided to move back home from Australia specifically to start this business.”
Already, Georgia and James have successfully cancelled £5,000 worth of subscriptions for their users.
And the best thing is that no real effort is required on the part of those who reach out to avail of their services.
“That’s real savings that we have for our users at the moment,” said Georgia. “We’re all about doing the work for people, not just telling them what to do, but actually doing things to save them money.
“We can proactively see all your subscriptions and show them back to you, and then we can cancel them for you on your behalf. One user, she had Deliveroo since 2019, and she said she hadn’t used it in years. She spent nearly €900 on that subscription and we were able to cancel that for her.”
Breadly was one of three winners at the Northern Ireland regional final of InterTradeIreland’s Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition.
The winning projects emerged from a field of more than 300 early-stage ventures to enter the competition, an all-island initiative that supports innovative businesses at seed, start-up and early stages of development.
Breadly – as winner of the B2C award – collected €50,000 in prize money.
It also now proceeds to the all-island final, which will be held on November 12, where it is in the running to win a further €50,000 if successful in its category.
The overall winner of the competition across all categories, meanwhile, stands to win €130,000 too.
It really is an exciting prospect for Breadly and serves as a valuable endorsement and encouragement for Georgia and James that they are doing something truly worthwhile.
“Winning the award was, honestly, one of the best days of the year for us,” added Georgia. “ It showed us extreme validation for the mission that we’re working towards – helping people save money, helping them achieve their financial dreams and showing that it’s possible.
“It really showed that we have external validation from some of the biggest investors, venture capitalists, in the island of Ireland.
“That meant everything for us to get that validation and the money will really help with our growth plans. We are already expanding our engineering team and we’re looking to really put that money towards product development, so we can give the best possible experience to our users.
“We have an ambition that we want to save £100 million for our users in the future. That’s our North Star Metric. That’s what we’re working towards.
“We’re tangibly improving our product, listening to our users and expanding our automations that we can save people money in more ways as we grow, expanding our team, and then just trying to, in the future, raise investment as well.”
Breadly is based in Newry and avails of office space too at Ormeau Labs in Belfast, with an active presence on social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. Further information is also available on its website, www.getbreadly.com
