WCC Digital Creative Fund was springboard for Yellow Panther

"Warwickshire County Council has really helped us over the last few years by helping us find funding for office space and the possibility of grant funding as well as inviting us to networking events."

A digital studio and technology company has secured two six-figure contracts and is hiring more staff after receiving help from Warwickshire County Council.

Yellow Panther, which was formed in 2019, provides cutting-edge websites, mobile apps and e-commerce platforms to 47 clients including Nike, Universal Tennis, and Somerset County Cricket Club.

The business, jointly owned by Stuart Cope and Gunjan Parikh, is on track to triple its size within five years after winning new contracts with the International Skating Union and Premier Padel.

The business increased its staff from 22 in 2022 to 35 last year and will be recruiting another project manager, strategy manager and marketing manager to join its base at 11 Waterloo Place in Warwick Street, and another ten-to-15 website developers and designers at its office in Gujarat in India in 2024.

Yellow Panther received a grant of £30,000 in the first round of Warwickshire County Council’s Digital Creative Recovery Co-Investment Fund which will deliver over £450,000 in grants to small and micro-sized digital creative businesses in the county to help with product development and accelerate growth.

The business has been busy working on its own software projects to bring their own Intellectual Property to market. Its in-house content management system for mobile apps and websites is called Noir and a data dashboard for websites and mobile apps has been named Fang. The panther theme is continued with the development of an OTT platform called Luna, a Digital Asset Management System called Sabre and a push notification platform called Push and Pull which will be launched this year after the Digital Creative Recovery Co-Investment Fund helped to develop their own Intellectual Property for Push and Pull.

Stuart said Yellow Panther has grown from a start-up to a scale-up company after expanding really fast over the last two-and-a-half years.

He said: “We have recently secured two of our biggest ever contracts with the International Skating Union which will include website development, a data dashboard and maintaining their mobile app and with Premier Padel for similar services. This will lead to bringing in three employees to the UK business and another ten-to-15 in India this year.

“We’re a business that has ploughed any profit back into the company to build new technology and take on new hires.

“Around 95 per cent of technology start-ups in the UK fail within the first year and 80 per cent fail in the second year, so to be in the five or 20 cent which survive is quite an achievement.”

Stuart said their growth was initially helped by Warwickshire County Council when Yellow Panther moved into 1 Mill Street and then to 11 Waterloo Place in Leamington.

“Warwickshire County Council has really helped us over the last few years by helping us find funding for office space and the possibility of grant funding as well as inviting us to networking events,” he said. "Being at 1 Mill Street meant we secured five contracts in the first year with other businesses there which helped us get started and it has snowballed from there.”

Cllr Martin Watson, Warwickshire County Council’s Portfolio Holder for Economy & Place, said Yellow Panther is a great example of how the Council provides support to businesses in a number of areas over time.

He said: “We have assisted Yellow Panther in various ways over the last couple of years with advice and guidance through different stages of their growth. This has included inviting Stuart to speak at events such as the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, providing advice around access to finance and searching for a new property to grow into.

“Yellow Panther’s client roster is already impressive and the work involved in their latest two contract successes underlines their expertise in their sector.”

* Please find out what other support is available to your business by calling Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub on 0300 060 3747 or visiting https://www.cwgrowthhub.co.uk