MacDirectory Magazine

Oleg Tscheltzoff

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Every industry needs a dis- ruptor, a figurehead who revolutionizes the way in which the masses consume aspects of the media, technol- ogy and culture to name a few. The founders of holiday lodging website Airbnb, for instance or those of the ridesharing app based service Uber are prime examples of individuals who have done just so. Enter Oleg Tscheltzoff; founder of Fotolia, one the world's top 500 most visited websites and Europe's number one stock image agency which sees annual revenue above $100 million. Fotolia was launched in 2005 when Tscheltzoff en- countered, when working on a prior start-up, the diffi- culties associated with finding imagery that was affordable yet could also be used for a multitude of business requirements. He honed in on the need for a common market place for people to buy and sell their images. The demand was obviously there and, as with all successful com- panies that rely on contributions from external sources, so was the supply. Over 32 million images are available on the site and with Photographers stemming from 157 countries, its unique selling point is engrained in its vast range of localized content; so much so that Fotolia dub themselves 'The World Local Image Bank'. As a result they have established offices in 23 countries ensuring that they relate and react to the demands of buyers, helping them find the image they are searching for more quickly and effi- ciently and that their Photographers are steered to produce the type of material that sells well. Fotolia is constantly evolving. A key indication of such innova- tion was by pioneering the way in which people can buy and sell images uploaded from their smartphones when it introduced its Instant App in October 2013. It has proved a phenomenal suc- cess with over 80,000 downloads of the app, 60,000 images up- loaded to the collection and 50,000 sales of Instant Collection images to date. Judging by the steady and continual success of Fotolia many others might have just sat back in contentment. Not Tscheltzoff. For what separates him from your average tech investor is his passion for innova- tion and challenges, which are very much ingrained in his DNA. For when last year Tscheltzoff came across a new opportunity, despite knowing the potential chal- lenges he might face along the way, he seized it. As a result, in January of this year he man- aged overnight to cause a whirlwind of both excite- ment and fear in what was otherwise a very comfortably, settled marketplace by launching another stock image website, How Oleg Tscheltzo Revolutionised the Stock Image Industry feature

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