Digital Sector

Business Loans Case Study

Published: 01 Mar 2012
Finance Yorkshire Investment Manager Ian Atkinson, Colin Liversedge, VR Software’s CEO and MD and Peter Beresford of Red Sky Corporate Services.

Finance Yorkshire provides valuable financial support to the digital and new media sector. The venture capital and loan fund has made a number of investments in information and communications technology (ICT), software, telecoms and media.

Finance Yorkshire has the financial packages available for a variety of requirements to help businesses achieve their growth ambitions. It can also join forces with other investors to provide gap-funding for specific projects.

Uses for Finance from the Fund include:

· Product creation and development
· Research
· Premises expansion
· New property
· Equipment and maintenance
· Working capital
· Employment
· Marketing
· Support for growing international markets
· Market penetration

Digital and new media facts and figures:

  • There are more than 13,000 businesses in this sector across the region, adding almost £5.25bn of gross value.
  • The digital and new media sector employs more than 123,000 people, including 18,000 self-employed and freelancers.
  • The electronics industries alone employ nearly 25,000 people in this region, generating annual sales of £3.8bn and contributing £1.7bn towards the region’s GVA.

Investments in digital and new media

VR Software

Based in Boroughbridge near York, VR Software provides software for retailers to help them plan, visualise and control stores from the comfort of their laptop and all in 3D.

To develop their market penetration in a competitive field VR Software, which announced 18 per cent year on year growth in 2010, gained a business loans investment from Finance Yorkshire.

Electrastar Ltd

Fibre optic specialist and data cabling installer, Electrastar Ltd, is addressing the national demand for high speed internet to help move Britain to the forefront of digital enterprise.

The company, based in Hull, secured a £25,000 business loan from Finance Yorkshire to buy new and maintain current equipment. This will help the business carry out fibre optic termination and testing services for various media in a wide range of environments such as CCTV, motorway communications, large display screens and computer networks.

Save9

Save9 provides expert technical services and solutions including web development, telecoms and ‘cloud computing’ - a network of remote servers hosted on the internet to store, manage, and process business applications and data.

Based in Scarborough, Save9 secured a business loan from Finance Yorkshire alongside investment from Cellular Solutions Holdings and Business Enterprise Fund to support the company’s growth plans.

Save9 is now enhancing its current cloud computing offer to business customers thanks to the funding.

Note: this case study is from Finance Yorkshire’s previous fund. Read more about Finance Yorkshire

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