Ubleam Accelerates the Launch of the "BleamCard", the 1st Augmented Reality Business Card, by Means of a Crowdfunding Campaign

PARIS, April 23, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Although only unveiled in December during LeWeb13, the BleamCard is already enormously successful. To meet demand, the Toulouse-based start-up Ubleam is launching a Crowdfunding campaign in order to accelerate the marketing of the product and to highlight the viral phenomenon. You can take part in this right away on the Indiegogo platform: http://www.bleamcard.com/indiegogo.

Ubleam has reinvented the traditional business card

28 million business cards are printed every day across the world**. There has been some discussion in recent years about this historic medium of communication focusing on originality and creativity, whether to have printed business cards or engage in social networking. Rather than pitting these two concepts against each other, Ubleam's approach is to combine print and digital to gain the best of both worlds and to launch a different and innovative product: the BleamCard.

Usually a static and silent product, the business card has been transformed into a sleekly designed and effective mean of communication offering a rich mobile augmented reality experience: the BleamCard raises the business card to the realm of a connected object.

Thanks to the customised bleam* printed on the business card, holders offer their network instant access to their DNA 2.0: contact details, networks, and, for professionals, there is access to marketing content, links, websites, blogs, etc. The card also offers many other features such as the number of views and the geographical location of scans of the paper card, sorting of contacts, etc.

"In the 2 months since my BleamCard was made and printed, the Ubleam application was uploaded from my card over 150 times," enthused Samuel Boury, the co-founder of Ubleam. "The estimated annual growth in the printing of business cards stands at 20%*** which shows that the physical medium still remains crucial. The BleamCard enables people to gains contacts and to add a little spice to discussions. I can present my business and have a long-term involvement with my contacts at any time."  

Join the Ubleam community  

Building on the success of a product so eagerly awaited on the market and an award winner at LeWeb13, the Toulouse-based start-up is launching an international Crowdfunding campaign on 22 April to raise funds and officially launch the service.

Backed by prestigious sponsors:

• Fred Montagnon, CEO Overblog, e-Buzzing
• Emmanuel Grard VP of the Fédération Nationale des Dirigeants Commerciaux de France (National Federation of Business Leaders of France),

Ubleam aims to raise at least €50,000 to accelerate the marketing and development of the BleamCard SaaS platform. In addition to just raising funds, the Ubleam team wants to highlight a viral product already eagerly anticipated by an audience which has already been won over.

"With the expansion of participative funding (Crowdfunding), start-ups have the opportunity to embark on a venture with a wider audience as well as accelerating their growth and development. This type of investment in the form of donations or loans enables everyone to invest in and take a chance on promising projects. With a revised, innovative product facilitating networking, we naturally thought of Crowdfunding to launch the BleamCard. This system allows us to speed up the launch to meet the expectations of our market while at the same time creating the first community of users. Demonstrating public interest in this product also gave us a chance to shine with our investors. We are therefore officially launching our call for funding on Indiegogo. Place your bets and bleam!" explained Olivier Mezzarobba, co-founder of Ubleam.

This campaign is an opportunity for the French start-up Ubleam to popularise the use of the bleam and augmented reality through a universal and inter-generational to foster international growth.

**********************  

* bleam: the 1^st interactive logo offering a unique augmented reality experience and new "mobile marketing" usages.

** Printer National, Business Card Designs, Wikipedia, http://www.ipsos-na.com

*** http://www.printisbig.com/

About Ubleam:  

Ubleam developed the 1st standard of mobile augmented reality and was an award-winner at the LeWeb13 Paris international conference. The bleam* (a smart logo) enables marketing and merchandising materials to be digitised and to monitor performance in real time on the Ubleam platform. This innovation also revolutionises industrial traceability by introducing new mobile interactions which result in saving time and money.

Many brands and companies are already using the bleam and its platform: Krys, B&B Hotels, Radisson, Stabilo, Capgemini, Airbus, stakeholders in the gas sector, etc.

Founded in 2011 by Samuel Boury and Olivier Mezzarobba, the Toulouse-based start-up Ubleam launched its SAAS products in France in 2013 and anticipates achieving 1m users with its flagship product (the 1^st augmented reality business card).

For further information: http://www.ubleam.com/

SOURCE Ubleam