Infinitely customisable videos

While videos play a leading role on social networks, there are few applications that allow novices to easily modify a video so they can stand out. The start-up Spooqs intends to fill this gap with its eponymous software.

Pascal Bertolino is a computer science engineer with a PhD from a precursor lab to GIPSA-lab, and was initially a specialist in computer vision and, as a result, image and video processing. He has supervised several theses on motion tracking techniques used to detect and follow objects. With his taste for coding and software engineering, he soon integrated the results of his work into a prototype algorithm used to create clickable videos that can still be found on the web today (Sensarea). In addition to his research, he continues to add the finishing touches to his software to make it more refined, professional and usable by a wider public. "The idea is to make it so that the user only has to select the object to be modified and then apply the desired effect, which the software then reproduces on all the images in the video, without any other user action," says Pascal Bertolino.

A meeting with technology transfer acceleration company Linksium encouraged him to establish a start-up to derive value from his work. He got in touch with the valuation team at Grenoble INP - UGA DRIVE, which supported him in creating his business. This led to Spooqs being founded in 2021 to bring the software to market and continue development. It obtained €90,000 in French Tech Emergence funding from BPI France in June 2022 to help it continue to integrate artificial intelligence into its solutions and finalise its first smartphone app for iOS devices. "Meanwhile, we are preparing for our first fundraising campaign of a few hundred thousand euros."

Pascal Bertolino, who partnered with a marketing specialist 18 months ago, has also contacted the Réseau Entreprendre Isère (REI) network to take out an interest-free loan and get monthly feedback from other company directors who have been awarded funding from REI. It should help the new start-up to really take off!

Find out more and download the software at: https://spooqs.com