© Kaptivo Group
A Cambridge firm has managed to find an opportunity amid the COVID-19 crisis with help from Enterprise Europe Network.
Shifting its marketing focus to the challenges facing the higher education market has prompted a significant upturn in orders for Kaptivo.
The company, which employs 20 people and has an office in Silicon Valley, California, is projecting a doubling of turnover within this calendar year.
Kaptivo’s primary product is a patented whiteboard camera system that can be shared via a web browser or on platforms such as Zoom. It was designed to meet the needs of business, education, and remote workers.
Promoting COVID-19 solutions
As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, EEN innovation adviser Simon Atack was called in to help the business build resilience, de-risk the business model and boost sales. The main areas of focus were:
- looking at how the existing product could help customers address their own COVID-19 challenges
- widening the company’s product portfolio to avoid over-reliance on a particular product or market sector
- communicating the company’s COVID-19 solutions to target markets.
Working with Simon, the company considered their university customers in light of the lockdown and how they could offer solutions. This approach revealed gaps in their marketing and how best to quickly get their revised message out to customers in an engaging way.
While commissioning a promotional video was seen as the most effective means of engaging with potential customers about their COVID-19 solution, that had to be rethought because of the time pressures and other practicalities.
National and international markets
On Simon’s recommendation, they looked at a video creation platform, Powtoon. Within an afternoon they had produced a video ready to send out to universities needing to restart lectures after lockdown.
Keen to develop additional products and services for new national and international markets, the company has been developing a new product specifically for remote teaching and working from home. It is a software-only product which would expand their portfolio, increase sales revenue, de-risk the business model and provide added value for customers.
Kaptivo a spin-out from the University of Cambridge in 2004, generates turnover of just under £1 million. It invests heavily in R&D and holds a number of patents.
