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Journey Of Piktochart: How An Asian Startup Has Become A Global Player

The world today is very fast and there are hundreds of things that are demanding our attention at the same time. As a result attention becomes the scarcest resource. From television to smartphone to web, everything is calling for slightest amount of spare time we have. What is needed to get the attention of your potential audience in such an atmosphere where attention is easily diverted? The answer is obvious: a better presentation, a better approach to calling someone’s attention but the question of how we do that remains unresolved. This is where Piktochart- a startup that helps people to make beautiful infographic, chart, and presentation by using a web based app-comes into play.

Piktochart

Piktochart is a web based app that lets non designer people to make beautiful design and data presentation. It allows users without intensive experience as graphic designers to create infographics by using readily available templates. A particularly critical feature of Piktochart is its HTML Publishing capability, which generates infographics that are readable by search engines, with multiple clickable elements for users, cutting out the necessity of hiring a developer in order to create interactive infographic.

Back To The Dawn

Founded by Ai Ching and Andrea Zaggia, Piktochart started its journey in 2012. Back then both of the cofounders were working at Proctor & Gamble (P&G). Once they left their day job they became interested in technology startups but they could not find an idea to start right away. They then looked at the design industry and readily identified the growing trend of infographic and visual presentation. In a conversation with Tech In Asia Ai Ching said: “Andrea and I both loved design and had great designers. And when we saw that the idea of infographics was going to become a permanent trend and there was no infographic editor out there, we wanted to create one that people could use.” That’s how Piktochart started its journey.

Based in Malaysia the company now servers a global audience of 800,000 registered users. Piktochart has been featured in many prestigious magazines and sites like Forbes, the Guardian, the Aljazeera, Tech In Asia, MIT Technology Review and many others. Piktochart CEO Ai Ching Goh has been featured as one of the top 10 most promising Southeast Asian tech entrepreneurs under 30 by TECHINASIA in 2015.

A Story Of Consistent Growth

Piktochart has been very lucky from the start. The company found a ready product market fit at the very early stage. As a result growth has never been a problem to this Malaysian company grown out of China. The startup which has now around 800,000 registered users acquired significant number of users in every month and remained innovative enough to roll out new designs and updates.

The Future

The future of communication, in most instances, is visual. People will be using more visual contents to make presentation, do blogs, and more and majority of these people will be non-designer that gives a huge opportunity for growth for companies like Piktochart. However, there are competitors joining the space almost every day and innovation and better product and better strategy will win at the end.

Lessons From The Journey Of Piktochart

Piktochart has done a wonderful job in building a company from Asia which now serves a users base of 800,000 from all over the world and growing. It takes real work to build a global company and one has to do more than one thing tick. Piktochart definitely did more than one thing tick. Here are few lessons we tried to pick from the journey of Picktochart:

  • Everyone can be great. You can also have a Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Juckerberg, Sam Barne's story. Remember the bible saying, ‘Everyone can be great’?-a saying that changed the young kid who will someday become Martin Luther King Junior!
  • It is always in your passion you can bring the best out of you. Do what you love to do and be more passionate at work.
  • Take challenge. People are tested through challenges. Venturing a new institution, a new project is always a challenging task and one need to come out of the comfort zone to make them successful.
  • Making anything from scratch is always hard but persistence wins at the end of the day.
  • As a startup founder you get to wear many hats at once. You do almost everything but it does not mean you get things half done.
  • Growth is a perspective and as a founder you have be growth oriented.
  • Product is the king. Great product wins all the time.

Sources: TECHINASIA, pictochart.com

Sabidin Ibrahim works as an Editorial Assistant at FS. He is passionate about media, communications and public relations. He loves poetry, obsesses with philosophy, and loves to learn new things.

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