- Onest Energy Awarded Best Sports/Energy Drink at the UK Soft Drinks Awards 2026 just eight months after launch.
- Beat major competitors including Ghost Energy ($990m valuation), Holy Energy ($13m+ VC funding) and NOCCO (€650m group revenue).
- Founder Maya Bedeau raised £475k despite Black female founders receiving just 0.02% of UK VC funding.
Natural energy drink brand Onest Energy has been named Best Sports/Energy Drink at the UK Soft Drinks Awards 2026, one of the most respected independent industry honours in the UK beverages sector. The brand was also recognised as a finalist for Best Packaging & Label Design. Onest Energy is just eight months old.
The UK Soft Drinks Awards recognises excellence and innovation across the UK soft drinks sector. Winners are judged independently on criteria including taste, ingredient quality and brand execution. Onest Energy secured the category win ahead of established global brands including NOCCO, Holy Energy and Ghost Energy.
“We started Onest with a belief that the energy drink market was ready for transparency and honesty: better ingredients, no nonsense, and a brand that customers can actually trust,” said Founder Maya Bedeau. “Winning Best Sports/Energy Drink at the UK Soft Drinks Awards, against brands with decades of history and hundreds of millions in funding, means everything. It tells us the product is right. Now we continue to build the brand around it.”
Bedeau raised £225,000 in pre-seed venture capital funding before the company had launched a product, bringing total funding raised to date to £475,000. The achievement is particularly notable given that Black female founders received just 0.02 per cent of UK venture capital funding between 2009 and 2019, according to research by Extend Ventures. The company is currently undertaking its next funding round.
The brand’s formula combines three simple ingredients: 80mg natural caffeine from coffee beans, magnesium citrate to help prevent crashes, and B vitamins (B3, B6, B12 and B7) to support energy at the cellular level, delivering just 30 calories and 4g of natural sugar per can. Onest Energy is available in two flavours: Sparkling Apple Berry and Sparkling Tropical Peach.
The category featured some of the most established and well-funded names in the global energy drinks market.
Bedeau added that winning Best Sports/Energy Drink less than a year after launch, ahead of some of the category’s largest and most established brands marks a significant milestone in Onest Energy’s growth and reflects growing consumer demand for simpler, more transparent energy drinks.