Pixomatic is an Armenian startup that has developed a state-of-the-art online photo editor, with a unique image-cutting feature. It allows instantly to remove a background from any photo, make it transparent, add different colours and filters, or switch the background with another photo.
The mobile app has over 500,000 monthly active users and is available on Web, iOS and Android devices.
Co-founder of Pixomatic Garik Avetisyan said they started working on the venture with three friends in 2015. The startup was launched in 2016 and is targeted at both personal and business users.
“Pixomatic’s unique feature was image cut-out at launch, but we have so many different features at this moment. We have the ability to delete unwanted objects from the photo, we have tools for improving selfies, and many more features,” he explains.
The usage of various image processing algorithms and machine learning, according to Garik Avetisyan, is the main factor that makes the technology behind Pixomatic unique.
Benefitting in 2017 from an EU-SMEDA Innovation Matching Grant (IMG), funded by the European Union under its EU4Business initiative, the Pixomatic team has developed patch and heal tools (deleting unwanted objects from the photos), which helped the team a lot.
Touching on the question of whether the startup is interested to enter the EU market, Avetisyan stated the huge importance of the EU market for Pixomatic, based on the fact that 35% of the startup’s customer base is from the EU.
While talking about the challenges that Pixomatic was facing in the early stage of its existence, Garik Avetisyan noted:
“Founding a business, even a small coffee shop is difficult everywhere. I would not say that it is more difficult for an Armenian startup than for any other startup. To some extent it is even easier. The most important thing is not quitting and listening to the market and your users, and having a vision. Founders should be optimists first of all. That’s it,”he concluded.
Pixomatic has ambitious goals for the upcoming year. It is planning to go even further and reach the milestone of 10 million monthly active users.
About EU-SMEDA
Since 2017, the ‘Support to SME Development in Armenia’ (EU-SMEDA) project, which is funded by the European Union under the EU4Business initiative and implemented by GIZ in cooperation with the Enterprise Incubator Foundation (EIF), has been supporting Armenian startups with two types of grant – Innovation Matching Grants (IMG) and Science and Technology Entrepreneurship (STEP) grants.
