A WORCESTER-based dot.com firm has beaten competition to become one of 10 finalists in the Government-sponsored nat-ional E-Commerce Awards.

St John's-based power-brokers.co.uk has been selected from more than 2,000 internet companies.

Now managing director Alan Cupper is set to attend the awards ceremony in London this Thursday where he could walk away with a £10,000 cheque.

The e-company, which searches on-line to find the best deal from gas and electricity suppliers, entered the competition after reading about it in the Evening News in January.

Main award criteria were that all businesses must be 100 per cent internet-based and must have been set up since January, 2000.

Now Mr Cupper is thrilled at the success of the business, not least because he says it has no budget and he runs it in his spare time.

"The success rate has been phenomenal. We have no budget, there's me, another director and the rest of the work is sub-contracted out. I do this in my spare time really - it's basically fully automated," he said

"We're competing for the award with dot.com companies with huge budgets.

"There's one doing a similar thing to us which has a budget of £5m and 10 staff, and the general idea seems to be that you have to throw money at internet businesses. We've proved that you don't."

Mr Cupper, who also runs Broadheath Property Construction Ltd, said the idea for the company came to him after an inefficient salesman failed to get back to him with sufficient details to persuade him to change suppliers.

"I tried to find out how many options I had," he said.

"I found out there were 26 gas suppliers and it took the last one eight weeks to send me tariff information.

"The fastest one was 10 days. I realised there was no option for people to compare tariffs.

"Basically the idea is a simple one, it's the same basis as you would have for car insurance."

The award ceremony will be held at the Grosvenor House Hotel. It is the only Government-sponsored e-commerce award and will be attended by several MPs.