Austrian Zerolens raises €235K to further develop and launch their product on the market

Austrian software startup Zerolens raised 235.000 euros from both, the Austrian VC Speedinvest and the Austria Wirtschaftsservice Gesellschaft (AWS) – the Austrian federal development and financing bank for the promotion and financing of companies, Austrian media reported. Reportedly, the money will help the startup to further develop and launch its product on the market. The team wants to work on the further development of the software and increase the team from three to five members.

“The €235,000 is a mixture of promotion and cash investment and enables the development of the software as well as the initial market entry”, says Lukas Fechtig, one of the founder of the startup, Wirtschafts Zait, reported.

Founded in March 2019 by Lukas Fechtig, Mirko Vodegel and Nik Redel, Zerolens is a virtual photo studio app that helps companies and creatives to easily create pictures for their marketing activities. Reportedly the young company Zerolens has set itself the task of making it easy for companies to create images for marketing purposes. This works with a web and mobile app where customers can independently shoot photos in virtual photo studios. With just a few clicks, realistic product photos can be generated directly from the laptop or mobile phone.

“At the moment we are working on further developing the tool with beta customers and integrating new features and virtual photo sets. The focus is on companies with a high demand for social media content”, Fechtig added.

As reported in the media, the idea for this startup was born during the time when their founders worked in an online jewelry shop. Reportedly while working there the founders Lukas Fechtig and Nikolaus Redl were confronted with one problem: producing professional product photos was very time-consuming and expensive – especially for products that are in an extraordinary and difficult to reach the environment, such as a tropical beach, had to be photographed. To solve the problem, Fechtig and Redl worked with another co-founder, Mirko Vodegel, on a technical solution to save both a professional photo studio and an expensive photographer or travel expenses.

In order to be able to photograph the objects from different perspectives in the virtual environment, they must first be modeled in a CAD program by a 3D artist, Fechtig explains. As another method, he added, photogrammetry can also be used. As Fechtig explains, the object is photographed with around 50 cameras 360 degrees from all sides and then rendered.

In the future, with the help of this app, visual content (images, videos, AR, VR) can be generated from realistic 3D objects. In the long term, according to Zerolens’ team, this technology, which until now has mainly been familiar from Hollywood, will replace the classic image material.

Speedinvest is a European venture capital fund for tech start-ups. The company collaborates with entrepreneurs in achieving their goal of building great companies. It is involved in early-stage investments and specializes in operational support. Speedinvest partners with a global network, that includes operations in Silicon Valley, to become a key investment and development hub for Europe’s start-up community.

The Austria Wirtschaftsservice Gesellschaft (AWS) is an Austrian federal development and financing bank for the promotion and financing of companies. The bank provides around €1 billion (2008) in development aid, mainly as grants, loans and guarantees to finance projects in the value of almost €11 billion (2008). AWS is focused on four different areas: technology and innovation, equity and capital markets, promotion and financing as well as services for research and development management. In addition to these core activities, it also administers the Austrian federal economic stimulus package of around €1 billion.