About Privately
Privately is a privacy and data protection start- up based at the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland.
Originally spun out of the Kudelski Group Privately specialises in information security, artificial intelligence and app development with a vision to help keep users’ personal data secure.
Privately have been identified as one of the Top 20 Start Ups in Switzerland (2015) and were finalists in the Ernst and Young Start Up challenge (2014).
The Business Challenge
Following their successful engagement with Ernst and Young in the UK Privately identified that they wanted to develop their products for the UK market. Privately were referred to Graystone Strategy to help them with their distribution strategy, channels and preparing for their UK launch.
Privately has created a child-centric online safety solution called Oyoty - focused on building resilience in children through a combination of self-help tools, awareness and education. The product is an innovative new service delivered using a machine learning, artificial intelligence and an app chatbot and helps children stay safe online.
The robot lives on the child’s phone and comes to life offering advice if a child undertakes risky online behavior, for example posting private information on social media, using unsecured WIFI or publishing inappropriate content.
Oyoty will highlight the issue to the child and talk them through editing, deleting or changing privacy settings to resolve the incident. The child or the robot can also escalate to parent via a parental dashboard, which gives parents advice on how to deal with online risk scenarios.
The Solution
Graystone Strategy offered advisory and operational help to Privately across a broad spectrum of needs including:
- Developing a strategy for routes to market and working with the Privately team to agree priority targets
- Building a pipeline of UK based business development meetings based on Graystone Strategy’s C level relationships across retailers, telcos and not for profit organisations
- Undertaking grass roots user research to help inform and develop the customer proposition
- Jointly developing marketing materials, developing the brand and registering all trade marks
- Building the pitch story for distribution channels and advising on commercial strategy and models
- Writing, curating and establishing content relationships with credible UK authorities in the online child protection universe
Outcomes
Over the 18 month retained relationship Privately have achieved a number of notable milestones including signing a distribution agreement with one of the UK ‘s leading technology retailers, agreeing a content partnership with Internet Matters to provide parental advice and launching exclusively with Internet Matters in October 2016.
Deepak Tewari CEO commented: "James has opened many doors for Privately in the UK. It has been a complete pleasure working with him and he has supported me in issues ranging from high-profile presentations and strategy planning to market testing with a bunch of noisy 8 year olds. We have definitely come a long way in the UK and Ireland which we could not have done on our own. I commend James on his professionalism and dedication as well for his friendly disposition, which makes it very easy to work with him."