The coronavirus pandemic is taking a toll on the economy of several countries worldwide. Majority of jobs now require people to work from home and multiple apps are being used on a daily basis to keep in touch with not only colleagues, but also with family members and friends. Infact, also homeschooling kids. There are many new apps that came to the limelight recently apart from Zoom, and two Amsterdam-based startups namely, 24sessions and Orangevine, have reached new milestones during lockdown.
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24sessions achieves 400% growth in video calling session
Lockdown doesn’t necessarily mean that your work efficiency needs to go down and the numbers by 24sessions prove just that. The Dutch startup witnessed over 400 percent growth over its entire client portfolio, which is a notable achievement. This increase comes in the wake of lockdown imposed in multiple countries and the numbers are only expected to grow further as organisations find new ways to keep in touch with clients via video calling.
Some of 24sessions’ clients are finding innovative approaches for helping their customers. For example, VodafoneZiggo has accelerated launching CX video calls due to the coronavirus pandemic. The telco’s account managers have commenced video calling as a new channel to communicate with the company’s clients. Additionally, Rabobank is another client of 24sesssions and it has extended video calling capabilities for doling out mortgage advice. Similarly, PostNL postal and parcel services in The Netherlands has also scaled up its video calling capabilities with 24sessions.
24sesssions is a Netherlands-based software startup that was founded back in 2015 by Rutger Teunissen and Konstantin Goncharuk in Amsterdam. The startup raised €1 million from venture capital firm Capital Mills back in late 2019.
Orangevine adds new solutions for meeting video call demands
Another Amsterdam-based startup Orangevine makes video calling easier for people and it has now added a new solution to its online video platform called Orangevine Meet. Orangevine Meet is a video conferencing solution that works via your web browser. This means one need not download or install a software. Additionally, there are no time limits imposed on the service either.
In addition to Orangevine Meet, the company has also introduced a completely new service for kids called ‘Once Upon A Land.’ It is a live video conferencing activity for kids, which is run by students. Parents can enrol their kids in the service by paying just €2.50 and their kids can then participate in fun and educational activities online. The kids will get to participate in multiple creative activities while maintaining social contact digitally with other kids.
“Traditionally, we’re a platform for business users but we wanted to help make home education possible, so, we expanded our online video platform with video conferencing functionalities and launched under the name of Orangevine Meet. Orangevine Meet is a platform where online instructions can be provided via unique digital rooms. Some of the schools we’ve helped have also requested a video portal, so we added that also. Several parents asked us for advice on how to combine their homeschooling with the moments when they themselves have to work. We quickly launched Once Upon a Land specifically for this. Once upon a Land is a live digital babysitter that provides with all kinds of fun activities and homework guidance for children, ” says Moriam Hassan Balogun, co-founder of Orangevine.
Parents can register their children via WhatsApp. For online activities such as the ArtSquad with Sophie (for children aged 4 to 6) and for the Great Story Corner with Jasmin (for children aged 2 to 4). Other popular activities include the Creative Bee Craft Corner with Senna and the Games Corner with Jade. The instructors are enthusiastic youngsters, who offer online babysitting to parents and who also want to contribute in these very difficult times. They can register their children via WhatsApp, on business telephone number +31 6 3400 4753 or via the website More information can be found on their official website.
“My daughter was able to participate in a digital drawing lesson from Once Upon A Land. She loved it! Her contact with the instructor was nice to see. They giggled and spoke as if they had known each other for a long time. I had a wonderful moment of rest for myself. explains mother N. Karemi from Leiden
Once Upon a Land is an Orangevine initiative, which has helped schools with online education through their new Meet service. I Am College Director of Education Robert Stompff explains: “We had to switch to full online education overnight. Thanks to our own teachers and the Orangevine custom-designed online video environment, this was done in no time. ”
Orangevine also uses the same Meet software for the live digital babysitter – a secured and personalized video conferencing platform and portal for students, teachers and parents.
Founded in 2016 by two experienced entrepreneurs, Orangevine has grown into a platform for business videos. The Amsterdam startup has developed a solution for SMEs and now also for schools that want to offer online education.
One more leading Amsterdam-based video conferencing startup Surfly contacted us to inform that since coronavirus made ‘work from home’ became the new normal, the demand for their technology has been through the roof. They also informed that, prior to coronavirus, the company had doubled the team size and were experiencing very strong growth both domestically and internationally.
Basically, Surfly offers a real-time web sharing technology (co-browsing) and enables remote collaboration by showing others what you see in your browser.
Brendan Jackson, VP Marketing, Surfly says, “We have seen a huge amount of growth in the usage of Surfly by our current customers as well as quite a lot of new interest across many industries. Since Surfly is really focused on delivering co-browsing along with video chat, it creates more of in-person meeting experience. You can not only chat with your customers but also see what they are seeing. It’s also been interesting to see the different industries that now have a demand that didn’t before. Retail is a great example, as the offline experience is still such a big part of a consumer’s journey. But with so many stores closed, they are looking at co-browsing and video chat solutions to browse their website with their customers and guide them as if they were in-store together.”
On asking what strategies do they have in mind to meet this shifting consumer’s demands? Jackson says, “For us it is all about bringing the right people on board and making sure our infrastructure scales with the demand. This hasn’t been an issue as our team has more than doubled in size since the beginning of the year, and we have no problems scaling our global infrastructure as needed. Beyond having the right team and infrastructure in place is having the right forward-looking mentality. While there is a rush to get the technology in place to adjust to the “new normal” of a remote world, we need to make sure that we help our customers think long term. For us, it is a marathon, not a sprint. The investments and process changes that have been made are not suddenly going to revert once this crisis is over. A shift has taken place and it will continue. So while we help our customers get up and running with Surfly as quickly as possible, we also help them understand how this technology will become a core part of their business for years to come.”
Surfly powers more than 100,000 users with over 2 million sessions per year across 40 different countries. Companies such as AO, Empire Life, Achmea, Fidelis Care, and Southern Cross rely on their co-browsing technology. In 2019, the company received an investment of €2 million from a Spanish B2B tech venture fund, Alma Mundi Insurtech.
If you’re also an Amsterdam-based startup and have noticed a growth among users during the pandemic, let us know in the comments section below, or feel free to email at [email protected]. Meanwhile, follow our coverage on Amsterdam city over here.
This article is produced in collaboration with StartupAmsterdam. Read more about our partnering opportunities.