Iquara awarded Science City web contract

START-UP Iquara, which has plans for a satellite office in India, has won the contract to build business support provider Science City York’s new website.

By The Newsroom Thursday, 23rd August 2012, 11:12 am

The business, which specialises in bespoke web and mobile application, was founded by Chris Rowell, managing director, Shanila Ashraff, software engineer, and Aboo Soyeed, technical director, a year ago. They are also the owners of the company.

It has been based at the Springboard business incubator at York Science Park since last November, having initially started out at Mr Rowell’s home in York. He said: “We’ve grown from building small corporate websites, which we still do, to much larger and more complicated web applications.”

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Recently, the business teamed up with web design and digital marketing business Ownbeat Creatives, another small company based in York, to bid on building the new Science City York website. Mr Rowell said this was “in open tender against many established firms”.

The project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund and is worth just over £28,000. Iquara is the lead contractor on the project.

Mr Rowell said: “We impressed Science City York with a solution that harnesses the power of social media and sector specific news alerts which will help to give Yorkshire’s businesses up to the minute news and a first mover advantage.”

Iquara, which has three full-time staff, plus one part-time employee, has also recently built the York Sport Village website in association with marketing agency Ideas Group.

Iquara has just taken on a new graduate from the University of York as a software developer and in the next 12 months plans to move its York office to The Catalyst, also on the York Science Park. It also plans to open a satellite office in Bangalore.

Mr Rowell said: “We hope not only to expand our skill set but also sell our services in the fast growing Indian market.”