UK tech start-up to take on international website creation market

15/09/2009

"Digital technologies present a huge growth area for the UK economy. Basekit's technology makes rich website design simple and accessible to a much wider audience, putting the company in position to take advantage of a huge market."

Outdated, static and featureless websites will soon become a thing of the past with the announcement of an investment into Basekit, a UK start-up which has developed a cutting edge website builder service.

The investment from NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and Eden Ventures will allow the company to launch a beta version of the platform, which will challenge the international website creation market by empowering small and medium sized businesses to create dynamic and powerful websites online.

The investment is a significant boost for the company which has defied current market conditions by growing from three full time staff to eight, and attracting this investment to complete development. It is one of the success stories of last year's 'Seedcamp' - a competition designed to identify tomorrow's entrepreneurs and support European talent to build world beating technology businesses.

Basekit is an online website design and build service, which enables users to create next generation websites quickly and easily using an on-screen 'drag and drop' technique, eliminating the need to write code and placing the website owner in full control of their own site. It allows those with little or no website development experience to create and maintain websites that contain the types of features which today's internet users have come to expect.

Today, most people find businesses or products and services by searching the internet. 'Local Search' - where people search online for a business by type, name or region - is growing at a rate of 50% per annum, two and a half times the rate of growth for overall search queries. Yet despite these facts small businesses are failing to leverage the power of the internet; approximately 50% of European SMEs do not have a website and the majority spend less than 10% of their marketing budget online.

Juan Lobato, CEO of Basekit says: 'Business websites are as important as prime location on the high street and yet we still see many businesses either with no website or with old style, static websites. Basekit will bring new opportunities to small and medium sized businesses, allowing them to design and power their own dynamic websites reducing the costs of having one designed for them.'

As a user-friendly website creation and website CMS (content management system) platform, Basekit will expand by appealing to two key markets; small to medium sized businesses seeking to get results online, whilst maintaining control and minimising cost, as well as professional website designers who can seamlessly integrate BaseKit into their existing process, vastly reducing the time it takes them to build websites.

Traditionally, adding features such as social networking, user comments, data capture forms and secure user logins have been relatively complex and expensive and have typically required the services of professional developers, but Basekit provides relative novices with a way to add these features themselves.

Jonathan Kestenbaum, Chief Executive of NESTA says: 'Digital technologies present a huge growth area for the UK economy. Basekit's technology makes rich website design simple and accessible to a much wider audience, putting the company in position to take advantage of a huge market.'

Charles Grimsdale, Partner at Eden Ventures adds: 'In such a tough economic climate it's exciting to see a UK start-up bucking the trend and growing the way that Basekit has over the past 12 months. No other UK business offers this product and this round of investment puts Basekit in a position to continue to grow and take on an international market.'

Businesses and web designers or developers interested in using Basekit can register their interest on the Basekit site (www.basekit.com). The team will be running a public beta in October and November by invitation only, and the service will be more widely available towards the end of Q4 2009.


For further information or to arrange interviews please contact Jan Singleton on 020 7438 2606/ jan.singleton@nesta.org.uk

Notes to editor:

About Basekit

BaseKit is a next generation website builder, enabling the creation of dynamic, rich and functional websites and web applications quickly and easily without the need to write HTML code. Having developed a working prototype, the team entered Seedcamp 2008 - the premier tech start-up competition in Europe - and were chosen as one of 7 winners out of 400 European web technology companies.

www.basekit.com

About NESTA

NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts), is an independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative as a means of driving forward economic growth and solving some of the UK's major social challenges. NESTA Investments has the largest portfolios of early-stage businesses in the country and is a leading authority on how to grow new ideas.

About Eden Ventures

Eden Ventures invests in technology companies in the telecommunications software, enterprise software, digital media, e-commerce, internet and mobile sectors in the UK and Ireland.  The Eden team comprises serial entrepreneurs with a spectacular seed investment track record. Eden offers its portfolio companies considerable operational management expertise in creating businesses of lasting value.

www.edenventures.co.uk

About Seedcamp

Seedcamp is a programme created to jumpstart the entrepreneurial community in Europe by connecting next generation developers and entrepreneurs with over 400 mentors from a top-tier network of company builders; including seed investors, serial entrepreneurs, product experts, HR and PR specialists, marketers, lawyers, recruiters, journalists and venture capitalists. Seedcamp Week 2009 will be held in central London on 21-25th September 2009.

www.seedcamp.com