Navigating through an ocean of media information on a specific topic can often prove to be a big challenge for most companies, especially when it comes to making important business decisions. One Bulgarian company however, has a solution that helps turn this data into useful business insights.
Media AI company Sensika Technologies provides actionable insights to companies, communication agencies and public sector entities, extracted from media content that is outside of their control: on websites, social networks, TV, radio stations and other alternative external data sources.
The company was founded in 2012, when founders Vassil, Nen, Alex and Kosta started the work on a proof of concept. During the end of 2012, the company officially presented a prototype that was convincing enough to raise a seed round worth €200K from Eleven Ventures.
Prior to founding Sensika, the founders were involved in a large-scale media monitoring and analysis project for a big pharma company. In this project, they managed a sizable professional services team in Sofia equipped with several tools to get the job done.
According to the company’s founders, this proliferation of various, disintegrated solutions brought them up the idea that the industry is lacking a single, unified solution for media monitoring and analysis that would cover the main channels – online, social, broadcast and print.
Since then, the company has worked with domestic and international clients such as the telecom companies Vivacom and Mtel (A1), but also Microsoft, CEZ, United Partners, and the Government of Dubai among others.
Human intelligence approach
According to Sensika’s CEO and cofounder Konstantin Christoff, the company’s revolutionary approach was to use the technology for media monitoring and from its very beginning it has embedded the technology for automatic data collection into its development.
“The second thing that makes us so different compared to our competitors is the unique manner in which we combine the capabilities of our SaaS platform with the expertise of a highly-skilled team of developers, AI specialists and media analysts, thus taking the best of both worlds. The human intelligence component injected on every step of the way within our process is our biggest strength and what makes us proud of ourselves the most,” Christoff tells The Recursive.
Then years later, the company is still looking out for ways to make one step further towards their mission of empowering their customers to make informed decisions.
“Therefore we recently established our fully-dedicated AI department to ensure that our customers would get the best of our solution,” Christoff adds.
Utilizing AI-supported processes and interaction
According to Christoff, during the last ten years, the company has laid the perfect foundation for AI-supported processes and interaction.
“Our first challenge was to transfer the “AI State of mind” and make it for the people and by the people. The actual everyday users of our platform became AI owners and nurtured themselves, coming up with proposed solutions and thinking of ways how they can achieve more with AI tools. These solutions vary in scope, between platform-wide, domain or client-specific tailoring of our AI models,” he explains.
Another challenge for Sensika was how to make its multilingual user base equally benefit from the interaction with the AI. Therefore, one of its goals is to make all media content accessible and cross the language barriers while also dismantling disinformation.
“We end up with a HI (Human Intelligence)-AI perpetual integration cycle, where the resulting data of final HI is used to continuously improve our AI models and systems that become production ready AI components,” Christoff tells The Recursive.
Expanding into the DACH market
Sensika’s next plans are focused on expanding into the DACH market starting from Berlin, and then covering the rest of the continent as well.
“The plan is to expand in the steps, first entering into the DACH market cluster, followed by UK + Scandinavia and last but not least – FRABEL (France and Belgium). In Berlin we already have our VP of Growth Europe – Mr. Mirko Stöckigt, building the team and business. By Q1 2023 the DACH team shall be 26 people strong – sales and marketing professionals,” Christoff points out.
The company’s market entry strategy is built around six pre-selected high-priority industries, and the target is to win over 110 clients in Germany, Austria and Switzerland by the end of 2023.
The company has also opened a pre-A round that will fund its European expansion in the upcoming months with the help of Bulgarian VCs, aiming for €2.5M.
At the moment however, Sensika remains committed to developing their solution and keeping its clients satisfied.
“The biggest benefits for the companies and brands that rely on our solution is that they are completely covered, come hell or high water, by accurate information, timely analysis, and the best-in-business actionable insights for crisis and reputation management,” Christoff concluded.
