Last week Croice, whose mobile app allows you to create photo stories with a background audio, announced its first round of financing with $500,000 brought in by venture fund Imperious Group.
Launched earlier this year by Russian entrepreneur Vadim Zhernov, the St. Petersburg-based startup presents its app as “a new media format.” The photo stories, named ‘Croices,’ can be up to 30 seconds long – for example, pictures of a party with music and voices in the background.
“This format conveys context better than a single photo or a short video clip,” underlines the company.
“Compressing information for quicker consumption is a trend that is gaining momentum. Working at the RIA Novosti news agency I noticed that it took roughly 15 seconds to read a piece of news while perusing visual information took substantially more time. That is why we invented the format of short photo stories that are easy to create and grasp,” says Zhernov.
Croice is currently available for iOS in more than 30 languages, targeting the US, European and Russian markets with plans to expand further to various Asian markets.
As a new media product, the startup claims to have no direct competitors. It may be compared, however, with Flipagram, an app that allows the creation of short video stories from a user’s gallery, add music and share them.
Launched in 2010 in Russia, Imperious Group already has physical or virtual offices in Ukraine, Israel and the USA. The fund has invested in 31 profile companies so far, including Ukrainian, American and Russian ones. Its target segments are big data, mobile, SaaS, e-commerce, security, fintech, enterprise software, social, advertising, consumer Internet, healthcare, sport, analytics, video and audio.
