Entrepreneurial duo Naomi Timperley and Vikas Shah launch consultancy

Two leading business figures from the region have joined forces to help scaling businesses.

Naomi Timperley and Vikas Shah MBE are behind Manchester-based We are GSI, a new “entrepreneur led business advice consultancy.”

Between them they have worked with companies across the UK ranging from start-ups to scale-ups and from family businesses to listed corporations providing entrepreneur led advice, and access to the networks, partners and suppliers to enable growth.

Naomi and Vikas decided to put their expertise together to help scaling businesses with growth, strategy and innovation services.

A stalwart of the tech world, Naomi is co-founder of Tech North Advocates, and is an experienced growth and innovation consultant.

She was named in the top 50 Computer Weekly Most Influential Women in UK IT for the past four years running and was previously chair of Future Everything.

Author of Thought Economics, Vikas Shah is an entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist.

He is CEO of Trafford Park-based Swiscot Group alongside being a venture-investor in a number of businesses internationally.

He is also a non-executive board member of the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and a non-executive director of the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Speaking to TheBusinessDesk, Vikas said: “For many businesses the world is a very complicated place.

“Every business needs expertise from outside and they tend to get that from the professional services sector, which is very well served.

“However, there is a big gap for entrepreneurial advice and having a real co-pilot to your senior team who’s been there and done that in the business world and can now help businesses grow and help them scale.

“Naomi has worked with many organisations over the years and I have invested in some and advised some and together we’re trying to bring that entrepreneurial perspective to those businesses and those founders to help them achieve success.”

Naomi said: “We’re offering support with growth strategy, innovation and market validation. There are not many people doing what we do such as board advisory or ‘entrepreneur in residence,’ programme.

“Vikas and I have been doing this for many years, we’ve also worked together on a number of projects, and we thought the time was right to finally do something together.”

She added: “Since launching, we already have a pipeline of inquiries and it feels like we’ve hit the market at a time where businesses are really needing that high-level expertise to come in and help them grow.”

While We are GSI is headquartered in Manchester, the consultancy will be working with businesses across the UK.

Vikas added: “One of the biggest things that businesses need is resilience and to build a resilient business they need growth and strategy.

“You’ve got to grow to the point where your cash flow makes you resilient, but you’ve also got to have a strategy underlying your business to make sure that your risks are controlled, your governance has control so that when things happen you know what to do.

“This is what we want to inject to make sure that the businesses that we work with become stronger and more resilient, as well as more successful.”