In the Ajujaht’s top 100, Pagerr, a team with pink shirts, was distinguished from the rest by reportedly making such a good sales call that even Elon Musk would have praised the youngsters. We examined Elo Johanna Kuklas, what makes Pagerr stand out.

Where did Pagerri come up with the idea and how did it come into its current form? What problem do you solve?

The idea for the Pagerr came up last spring when Rudolf-Gustav Hanni, who was still head of the publishing house SEIK, visited an Estonian printing house. The printing house’s CEO asked Rudolf, as a publisher, what could be done with wasted paper, which they estimated to be at least 7% of the daily paper output. This means, about 50 tonnes of paper is wasted every day in Estonia alone. Since printers have no time to devise their own resources, and it is difficult to do anything with this amount of paper alone, the idea appeared to start offering everyone the opportunity to order their prints in a way that reduces paper and production resources.

There are tremendous untapped resources in the printing industry because there were no orders to add to the printed board at the right time. Businesses and printers do not optimize their printouts, which means there is free space on the printing plate or large paper for other orders. To solve this problem, the team has now been engaged on a daily basis and has developed a solution that is a convenient web page to order prints and an application to easily and profitably add new prints to the printing plates.

What do you see as the strength of your team? Who is on your team? background, connections, etc?

We consider the long-term connections with the printing industry and business background to be the key strengths of our team. The team members previously worked together to create and develop several companies. In addition, our highly experienced developer should be noted as a strength.

Our team has five core members:

Rudolf-Gustav Hanni is the CEO of the company. He is in charge of business development management, team management and designing the best solution with the printing houses.

Toivo Hanni is a developer who digitally built the first working prototype. He is the technology manager responsible for day-to-day operations and works closely with the development manager with whom the program is being developed.

Elo Johanna Kuklane, which is me, is responsible for marketing and partnerships.

Siim Tiilen is the development manager. In recent months, he has created an application for printers to easily and quickly print new products directly from our system. Without additional work.

Ott Nool manages sales activities and is looking for new partners to offer more environmentally friendly prints.
Rudolf and Toivo are brothers; They met Elo many years ago when they launched the SIBIS Web Store. Ott and Siim joined the team a little later, but their skills are a great addition to our team.

What do you see as the greatest need for your idea or team?

We need investment the most to further develop the technology and scale the business.

Where does your business idea/ambition go? What will you achieve in the next 12 months?
Over the next year, we want to use 650 tonnes of paper that would otherwise be leftover in the printing industry. In addition, we hope to successfully expand beyond Estonia and start cooperation with some new big partners. We want to make people aware of the amount of resources actually wasted in industries and how easily we can change that.

Which competitor do you consider special/strong? In which team would you like to be on?

Ajujaht has a lot of cool ideas and fierce competition. For example, one of the great companies is Aligner, a translation services start-up that has caught an eye.

Out of all the possible problems in the business sector, you chose the printing sector. This is understandable because of your team’s background, but aren’t you afraid that the sector will remain too niche in the end?

The Estonian printing industry has a market volume of 200 million euros, which is less than three percent of the European printing market. There is, therefore, no need to fear that the sector will remain too niche.

So far, we have decided to focus on the target groups that we can most benefit from. First, companies that constantly need labels, leaflets, packaging and order them on a regular basis. Second, companies that need marketing materials. Third, collaborate with various design tools and programs – such as Canva – to provide their customers with more environmentally friendly printing services.

Which feedback from the jury has helped you the most?

Mart Maasik’s suggestion to think bigger and find new solutions, comes into mind. Thanks to him, the idea at the Slush conference was to grab the button by the founder of Canva and pitch him our idea. We are currently in a discussion of possibilities for cooperation.

Why do you have pink shirts?
We wanted to make our masculine team a little more feminine so I wouldn’t feel so lonely.