ain.ua
The founders of the popular mobile messaging application Snapchat have bought Odesa startup called Looksery for about $150 million, according to ain.ua.
It is noted that the whole developers' team will now move to the United States.
Looksery has disappeared from the AppStore as a separate application, becoming part of Snapchat - when tapping on the image of their face during a video call, the users may now see the familiar filters from Looksery.
Looksery is software for mobile devices, which allows editing and enhancing the image of users' faces in real time, even during a video chat. With this application, one can "lose or gain weight," get their skin smoothed or defects eliminated. Anything can be changed - from eye color to the shape of the skull. Animation cartoon characters or horror movie heros can be put edited into the image.
The project saw the most income from licensing the technology. Although, the application itself was a success: three million downloads of the iOS-version in just few months after launching.
Read alsoTwo in Ukraine to pay $30 mln to settle hacking-insider trading chargesAfter a successful campaign on Kickstarter last year, many popular media wrote about the Ukrainian team: TechCrunch, Forbes, VentureBeat, CNN. This has helped to attract Western clients: operators of call centers, cosmetics companies and movies studios, all interested in Looksery technology.
Since it was possible to quickly find customers in Western markets, the team swiftly jumped to a monthly $1 million turnover.