Funding for Innovation Birmingham Campus-based GuyKat.
Learning technology specialist GuyKat Solutions has received a £50,000 grant from The Birmingham Post Growth Fund to contribute towards a £200,000 investment plan.
The company – established at the Innovation Birmingham Campus five years ago – produces tailored corporate training for delivery online. The training is animated, interactive, self-paced and blends gaming elements with voice-led instruction and video.
£150,000 of the new investment in GuyKat’s growth will come from retained profits and director loans. An additional £50,000 grant has been awarded by The Birmingham Post Growth Fund in partnership with Bournville College in order to accelerate the pace of growth.
Over the next 12 months, the £200,000 investment will enable the company to double the size of its team to 12. The rapid expansion is being driven by major new contracts from four blue-chip multi-nationals. More than 50 per cent of GuyKat’s revenue is from overseas business.
Guy McEvoy, Managing Director of GuyKat Solutions said: “This is the first time we have received a grant to help to fund our growth. Business grants are vital to accelerate growth and enable small companies to capitalise on market opportunities, especially when bank loan finance is so difficult to secure.
“We are now underway with a phased recruitment plan, building on the success of our last financial year. We are creating roles for specialists in instructional design, creative media and web technologies, as well as recruiting our first apprentices. We’re also going to be far more aggressive in our marketing in the coming year, increasing our presence at the major learning technology events.”
GuyKat’s work with Mondelez’ European marketing team was shortlisted for Best eLearning Project in the Private Sector at the 2014 eLearning Awards. The company was also presented with the Digital Technology award at the Midlands Insider International Trade Awards in October 2015.
Guy McEvoy added: “Online training delivery is booming, and more and more global companies are seeing how our technology can slash learning and development budgets, compress roll-out schedules, and free-up employee time without any compromise to people development objectives. We’re trying to redefine people’s reaction to eLearning, and the feedback is great – people enjoy our training.
“Within five years of establishing our business at the Innovation Birmingham Campus, many of our programmes are being rolled out across Europe and beyond – to a total of 42 countries in the last year. Without seeking to be so, we have become a small multi-national, as more than 50 per cent of our revenue comes from overseas.”
GuyKat’s approach to all projects is to work alongside the client’s in-house subject experts as an instructional design and technology partner. Its focus is on rapid production without compromise to quality.
GuyKat is one of 20 early stage tech companies receiving support from Innovation Birmingham’s ‘e4f Inspire’ programme, which delivers a series of workshops, keynote events, entrepreneur dinners, off-site visits, funded internship/apprenticeship placements, and peer group sessions, in order to accelerate the growth of entrepreneurial tech companies.
For more information on GuyKat solutions, see www.guykat.com