Lumifig Studio offers visual storytelling in UK after overseas wins

Lumifig Studio, a data- and analytics-driven video production agency helping businesses build loyal communities, is now offering services to UK customers.

If that sounds like a new company being launched, hold your horses - Lumifig’s co-founders already have 282k subscribers on YouTube plus 1.8m Facebook followers, and have reached 65.7 million social media users on the other side of the planet.

You just haven’t heard of them because their market so far has been Bengali speakers. The studio’s website went live last month, which is a source of delight for co-founders, CEO Nazmus Tareque, and Dr Raysa Khan Tareque.

“It was a passion project of ours which we launched from our home office in Cambridge,” says Naz.

“Since January 2022 we’ve created 246 pieces of video content which we’ve posted for our pages, this has reached 65.7 million people - they’re individual Facebook accounts, which have been viewed for 366.6 million minutes on Facebook alone.”

So how did the service start?

“We did a Cambridge video of the Starship robot delivery services, which got 12m views, and a vlog about the delivery, and people got really interested. One thing we did was for the Viking Line in Stockholm - we did videos for them, it was sponsored content from their cruise ship, so that got 5m views and they really appreciated it, so we got into sponsored content with brands.

“For Viking Line they wanted business from India, which is a growing market, so it worked for them. And during that time we honed our craft, found out what works, and listened to feedback.”

And what sort of content are they watching?

“It’s videos starting with food, lifestyle, travel, talking about business and start-ups… We have an extended team of helpers to help us manage production.”

The couple had been in Cambridge for three years before the start-up began.

“I was in Oxford before,” says Naz, “studying for a law degree. After that, I worked in London but didn’t enjoy it so moved to Stockholm to join the venture capital firm Antler, as an entrepreneur in residence. That was an eye-opener. I fell in love with the start-up ecosystem, and after Antler, I came back to England.

“Antler funded the Norwegian impact startup Equality Check, I became the UK country manager and worked with them for a year. Raysa had started working at Evonetix as a scientist, she’s a chemist.

Naz adds: “Cambridge provides the perfect backdrop for Lumifig’s launch, being at the forefront of biotechnology and AI - the business ecosystems here will benefit from tech-driven high-end visual storytelling. We have seen that complex knowledge-based companies often find it hard to communicate their worth and work to the public and that is where Lumifig comes in.”

The inspiration for the name comes from the esoteric lore surrounding the fig in various wisdom cultures. In many traditions, the fig symbolises insights or knowledge intended for a small number of people with specialised knowledge and interests.

“Lumifig is built to shed light on this super-specialised knowledge and democratise it,” Naz notes. “We plan to reach a multi-generational audience from fun-loving TikTokker to serious LinkedIn users.”

Lumifig is preparing for the next stage of its development with the addition of Novera Rahman Orishi as lead creative producer.

Novera brings a wealth of expertise in creative campaigning, blending traditional and digital advertising seamlessly, “he’s a proper ninja when it comes to video photographic work” says Naz “so we want to work not just on one-off projects for clients but over the longer term, so we have a monthly subscription service. The service starts from £2k a month.”

On investment, Naz is pragmatic.

“We want investment but initially we’re boot-strapping - if we tried to raise investment at this stage the investors would get too much and offer too little. We have a good runway for now. We want first to find the product-market fit and create a recurring customer base by implementing our existing service. Once we have done that, we can go and pitch to investors - showing what we’ve done.

“‘Show, don’t tell’ is the mantra, so we’re implementing the existing service and then we can pitch to investors when we can say ‘look at what we’ve done’.”

There’s no formal office but that’s about to change.

“We’ll maybe need a studio after February. That would be a dream come true for us. Our office would be in the studio. We love being in Cambridge.”