Started with a drawing on a napkin in August 2014, a year later a simple vision became reality. An idea that began with sketches turned into a full-fledged video platform that utilized tagging to generate engaging, unique and creative interactions for viewers. The vision grew rapidly and the Tagazu brand came to life.
The Idea
Tagazu is a video-tagging platform that allows video content creators to add clickable and movable hotspots within a video. Once the viewer clicks on a hotspot, he/she will get directed to external sites to either purchase a desired item or to find more information. And all of these statistics are stored in Tagazu’s analytics section. Unlike any other interactive video service, Tagazu is intuitive to use and very affordable. It is a subtle alternative to present information in a more creative and interactive way to the viewers. Tagazu.com is being launched in fall 2015. The team Tagazu hopes to bring the power of web to video and the masses.
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Today, over 20% of video views are happening on mobile devices. According to a recent eMarketer study, more than 77% of all tablet users will watch video programming on their devices at least monthly, and that penetration rate will grow to 87% by 2018. To put that into context, more than 70% of all digital video viewers will be watching on a tablet in 2018. (Source)
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Meet the Makers
Aurimas is a professional with great experience within the field of business and economics. Aurimas got his Bachelor’s degree from Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. He then got his Bachelors in Science and Economics at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Aurimas got his Masters degree in Business Administration from McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.
Among his various ventures, Aurimas was also a Board member of Roots of Development in Washington D.C., where he helped impoverished communities acquire the knowledge and resources to strengthen and manage their own development. Along with Tagazu, Aurimas is working with Samira on the creation of an organization that unites volunteers with those in need. The first project is set to take place in Nepal in 2016.
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Percentage of viewers who actually watch an entire video to its completion is low, and poor engagement and low conversion is a common – and expensive – problem. (Source)
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With her unique eye, creative intuition, a diverse skill set and experiences, she embodies versatility. As a specialist in Directing, Producing and Public Relations, all while being fluent in a range of languages such as Bulgarian, Polish, Russian, and Arabic, she is constantly applying herself and honing her expansive set of skills.
She attended the Robert H. Smith school of Business at the University of Maryland, obtaining a Bachelors Degree in International Business. She has worked for various international companies on branding, customer relations, and international team management. Building off of her acquired knowledge and experience, she became a creative director and photographer, presenting 3 solo exhibits in Washington D.C.
Currently, Samira is focusing on the Launch of the Tagazu website. She is also working on creating an organization that will unite people who are looking to help those in need, bypassing the administrative costs associated with nonprofit organizations. Through this program people will be able to make direct donations to the causes and volunteers will be able to visit project locations, providing hands on assistance. The first project is set to take place in Nepal in 2016.
The Team
Tazagu is currently a team of 8 people and we will be launching this October. The platform is accessible via the net and therefore can be used all over the world. The company is concentrating on the USA market right now.
Hurdles on the way
The biggest challenge they faced was to understand what are some of the challenges content creators face. To get to know this better and to get in-depth knowledge of the issue they conducted numerous interviews. Apart from that they have been facing many other critical challenges starting from software development to identifying targeted audience and finally developing pricing structure. Regardless of these hurdles on the way they weren’t dwindled and kept working towards their goal.
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That said, with its two-way engagement and completion rates of 90% and above, interactive video is poised to become the single most powerful tool companies have to communicate with customers and demonstrate true ROI to the higher-ups.(Source)
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Dodging the competition
Interactive video is still at its infancy, it is still taking shape and finding its place in the market. The model of making video interactive is inefficient and very costly, and the space is filled with production companies. There are very few companies offering a DIY service to make videos truly interactive and out of these very few allow the video content to be tagged.
Tagazu platform is disrupting the way production companies have done business for years. Tagazu’s competitive advantage is not only to offer affordable service but also to allow content creators to tag videos themselves with extremely easy to use and intuitive set of tools.
USP
Tagazu platform unlike other similar solutions is extremely easy to use. They are the only platform in the market that offers DIY tagging tools to follow moving object or person within a video. This solution works flawlessly and the whole process is super intuitive and extremely affordable. Movable Tagazu is fully customizable, ranging from numerous color options, application icons and even special animated characters.
The competitive advantage they have is grouped under two categories:
For Content Creators
- Ease of use
- Affordable price
- Ability to control content
- Fast and intuitive workflow
- Full marketing analytics of videos and tags performance
For viewers
- Subtle engagement with video content
- Ability to get answers only when you want them
Target Market
The target market for Tagazu are the people who rely of videos for a major chunk of their work. They have identified their target market as three major groups.
- Media & advertisement agencies
- E-commerce
- Bloggers and other affiliate program participants
These three are thought to be the groups that will benefit most from the services of Tagazu as their work requires extensive use of videos.
Funding
They are a self funded platform and are not looking for investors of any sort as of now. At this time they are looking for strategic partners to join them. They are currently using the bootstrap strategy, which has proven to be very efficient for them as it helps them to utilize their funds judiciously.
Road Ahead
Like their funds, they don’t want to waste any time as well. They had done proper strategic planning for the future and have set targets for themselves. Here are some of the features they are working on.
- They are developing a mobile application at the moment
- They are working on a face recognition feature
- They are participating in many ecommerce and technology conferences in the USA
- They are working on plugins for various major video content platforms
- They are working with lead marketing agencies to help us refine the product further for e commerce
- They are working with affiliate programs to help bloggers adapt their product for their videos and this way be able to use the affiliate program codes they receive directly on the video
