Aspida is best known for its personalised virtual keyboards.
Aspida is a startup which develops customised keyboards and, through a Funderbeam SEE campaign, it hopes to raise 200,000 euros of fresh capital needed for further product development. Investors who want to fund the company’s development can join until 25 July when the fundraising campaign will end, reports Večernji List on 16 July 2017.
So far, they have collected 106,000 euros from 48 investors, mainly from Croatia, Estonia and Finland, but there are also investors from Germany, Turkey and other countries.
The founder of Aspida Marin Erceg points out that he is very pleased with the results so far, but adds that by the end of the campaign he hopes to raise 200,000 euros. The minimum investment for a single small investor in the company is 100 euros. Given that the company is estimated at 2.7 million euros, with the investment of 200,000 euros the new investors will become owners of 6.9 percent of the company’s shares.
Aspida’s personalised keyboards are already well-known, and there are more and more businesses that want to have their own keyboards. The digital marketing platform has functions that enable a more interactive use of mobile phone keyboards. The Izzy virtual keyboards have already been adapted by Hajduk and Dinamo football clubs, and Erceg hopes that many football clubs will soon follow them. Still, the biggest breakthrough with this product has been made by signing a contract with Rovio from Finland for the Angry Birds interactive keyboard.
Erceg says that as many as 75 percent of Instagram fans of football clubs want to have a personalised keyboard, which demonstrates that the target audience for their product is large. They have developed about thirty applications so now and have over 200,000 users.
Aspida has also produced the first mobile application for video-notifications in the world called TVizzy, which has the support of Croatian Telecom. The TVIzzy app will notify users about the most important moments in the matches of the first Croatian football league. Just two minutes after a crucial point in the game (a goal scored, chance, a red card…) a notification will appear on user’s screen, together with a video that can be viewed even on a locked phone.
Before the content is displayed, the app shows an ad for just two seconds. Aspida estimates that this is sufficient length to send a marketing message, but not to discourage users from consuming content. The company believes that they should have around 100,000 users by the end of the year.
The primary investors who lead the investment campaign are Miroslav Jeličić and Berislav Martić from Jadran Kapital. They are already co-owners of the company, given that Jadran Kapital has 23 percent of Aspida. Funderbeam SEE is a global platform where startup businesses can raise funds and investors can trade their shares thanks to the blockchain technology. The company was founded in the fall of 2016, and the Zagreb Stock Exchange has a 20 percent stake in it. It is also supported by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which has invested funds from the Shareholders Special Fund.
