Winning the 2016 Talent Unleashed Award in Europe for Best Tech IPO/Venture Capital Raising Daniel Horner of Blippar speaks about his business, how they started and how it felt to win at the EU awards.
We are a leading, global technology company specialising in augmented reality, artificial intelligence and computer vision. Our flagship product is the Blippar mobile app, a leading augmented reality, visual browser for the physical world. Utilising proprietary technology, the Blippar app enables users to instantaneously discover more about the world around them, by blipping (“scanning”) objects they’re curious about and unlocking useful and entertaining content. The app now has over 65 million users.
Tell us a little about Blippar
We are leading the charge in visual marketing and helping brands utilise the true power of their owned media. For every 30-second commercial on TV, every pop-up ad on a website, every billboard on the site of the road, there are hundreds of thousands of actual products in the hands of consumers today and lining the shelves of the stores they frequent. With Blippar, brands can take advantage of this medium in a completely revolutionary way, by layering digital content on top of their actual, physical product. From beauty to automotive to the pharmaceutical industry and more, products are the new media – and ultimately, the way consumers view, understand, and experience a product will be the deciding factor in their decision to buy, use and ultimately purchase again.
What makes Blippar different?
As the business continues to grow, we are continuously expanding and strengthening our capabilities. Early user behaviour with the app demonstrated high demand for more everyday objects to become “blippable, ultimately shifting our attention from visual marketing to AI-enabled visual discovery. As Blippar’s powerful AI “brain” learns and grows on its own, it is able to discern between a greater number of objects, places, and even people, where currently, the app works like the brain of a small child recognising most everything in the physical world; By the end of the year, it will be more like a young adult, recognising individual characteristics. By providing a portal with which to discover the physical world through the lens of our mobile devices, Blippar is delivering a wealth of targeted information in an enriching way with its real-time, real-world visual discovery capabilities.
What about your success to date.
Since launching in the UK in 2011, we have expanded rapidly out of 14 offices worldwide, partnering with 1000+ of the largest brands and media owners, including Condé Nast, TIME Inc., Unilever, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Heinz, Coca-Cola, Anheuser Busch, L’Oréal, Universal Pictures and Jaguar. Blippar Inc. also includes Blippar Lab, the company’s R&D unit as well as Blippar Education, which now works with a community of over 65,000 schools and educational publishers to bring all the benefits of the digital education revolution to classrooms. We were featured on the 2015 CNBC Disruptor 50 ranked 19th in a list with Tesla, Uber, Spotify, Airbnb and more. We were also named one of the 2016 Bloomberg Business Innovators. We have raised over $100 million dollars in funding from large investors, which invest in our long-term vision.
How did it feel to win at the European Awards?
At the end of the day no matter what your company does it’s built on talent. For Talent International to recognise companies and individuals that are achieving amazing things, it’s really important because even though we’re a technology businesses ultimately its people that build and develop those technologies and we need to celebrate their success.