Since 2017 “Support to SME Development in Armenia” (EU-SMEDA) project, which is co-funded by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by GIZ PSD SC Regional Programme, in cooperation with Enterprise Incubator Foundation (EIF), has been supporting Armenian startups with two grant competitions.

Being a part of the EU4Business and EU4Innovation Initiatives, EU-SMEDA provides 2 types of grants: Innovation Matching Grant (IMG) and Science and Technology Entrepreneurship (STEP).

With a series of articles, we will be exploring startups that received grant in the framework of the EU-SMEDA project.

Wirestock helps content creators distribute and track their content much faster and easier.

According to the co-founder of Wirestock Mikayel Khachatryan, the startup gives the creators one-door access to the largest stock content marketplaces as well as automates all of the required submission steps.

In addition, the copyright information about each item managed through Wirestock gets registered on a blockchain-based copyright registry, making the process of proving ownership much easier.

“We have interacted with licensed content in the past and always saw tremendous value in it. We decided to build a tool/platform for stock content creators when we found out how boring and time-consuming the process of stock content contribution was,” Mikayel notes.

There are two aspects of Wirestock’s technological solution that makes it unique.

Firstly, the team uses image recognition and automation to make the photo/video submission process seamless for content creators. Also, the startup is building a distributed copyright registry of licensed content using blockchain and smart contracts which makes it easier for content creators to prove their ownership rights.

“We have benefited immensely both in terms of startup funding as well as from mentorship throughout the incubation period,” Mikayel notes.

“Knowledge sharing event” unites 34 EU4Business IMG and STEP grantee startups

The startup has received IMG grant in 2018 and currently has 14 people in its team. EU is one of the startup’s target markets.

“In fact, a lot of early adopters are from the EU. Many countries in the EU have strong photographer communities which is our target segment,” Mikayel explains.

Wirestock’s team wants to make Wirestock a go-to platform for content creators to manage and license their work.

“Our focus is to make the experience of content licensing and tracking as convenient and easy as possible. We will continue automating the content contribution process and attracting more content creators globally,” Mikayel concludes.