PARIS, France, 22 April 2021 – Paris based OCUS™, a machine learning-enabled B2B image creator, has closed a 20M€ ($24M) investment led by Ring Capital and joined by A/O PropTech and Expon Capital.
OCUS will use the monies raised to further invest in product development and its use of machine learning to curate and create cutting edge marketing assets while expanding its market presence worldwide.
Focusing on enterprise clients, OCUS is already the technology partner to Google, Radisson, Grubhub, Yemeksepeti and Foodpanda around the world in producing the most powerful images for their brands.
As more business sales are generated online, the need for high-quality images to help businesses sell their wares to customers has never been higher.
For example, eight out of ten Americans expect compelling product images when shopping online, according to BigCommerce.
But many businesses face the problem of having to spend too much time and money on sourcing these digital assets.
OCUS solves this problem by completely outsourcing the content creation to be used on online platforms, much like photo agencies for example provided photography for use by a wide variety of traditional print media.
Unlike traditional photography providers, OCUS uses machine learning to produce optimised images.
OCUS’ robust API-first platform augmented with machine learning and image recognition delivers optimized and intelligent images within hours or days. Combined with the OCUS Community of 30,000 global Image Creators™ in photography, videography, and drone, OCUS can service its clients in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
“As long-term partners to OCUS, we are delighted to accompany them in this important development phase, supporting their growth around the world and contributing to the creation of a global champion designing an exhilarating and entirely new category,” said Geoffroy Bragadir and Thomas Marsal from Ring Capital.
With COVID accelerating digitization in global markets, OCUS already leads the FoodTech/Delivery industry.
The company expects to see an acceleration in adoption in:
“OCUS is thrilled to have Expon and A/O PropTech join the board, along with Ring Capital and our historical investors Sofiouest, Evolem and Anaxago” said Thibaud Lemonnier, Co-founder and CEO. “Their confidence and support in OCUS enable us to continue designing the future of imagery in a fair and scalable way.”
“It’s often said that a picture is worth a 1000 words, and with more consumers shopping online, grabbing a customer’s attention is more important today than it has ever been. Compelling and professional photos are a key part of today’s sales-kit online, and what’s truly exciting about OCUS is that it is able to do this at scale and provide companies with an outsourcing service, “ said Othmane Zrikem, Chief Data Officer at A/O PropTech “We are excited to partner with OCUS and are impressed with their leading enterprise imagery platform which is already delivering successes with FoodTech and Hospitality customers today. In the future, we believe the platform has the technological strength to scale and service many other industries – such as retail or hospitality- with state-of-the-art visual content.”
