Munich Startup: What problem are you solving?
Shahram Shahangi, CEO & Founder: European cinemas, festivals, and streaming platforms struggle with outdated film discovery tools, dwindling interest from younger audiences, and a lack of insights into viewer preferences. Existing apps and catalogs are often cluttered, offer little personalization, and provide no actionable audience data. Moji solves these problems through a modern, conversational discovery experience that boosts engagement and enables more informed programming decisions.
The key challenges:
- Outdated film discovery tools: Festival apps, cinema websites, and streaming catalogs are often static and difficult to use. Audiences, especially younger viewers, expect interactive, conversational ways to discover content.
- Low personalization: Most platforms offer only generic recommendations. Moji, by contrast, delivers value-based, conversational guidance tailored to individual tastes—entirely without tracking.
- Declining interest from younger audiences: Younger viewers are increasingly turning away from traditional cultural venues. Moji meets them where they already are: in the digital world, through natural interaction via text and voice.
- Lack of actionable audience insights: Cinemas and festivals often lack anonymized analytics to understand their audiences’ preferences. Moji delivers privacy-compliant insights that enable data-driven programming and more targeted marketing decisions.
- Fragmented tools and lack of scalability: The industry lacks a unified, scalable solution for film discovery. Thanks to modular APIs and white-label implementation, Moji integrates directly into existing apps, ticketing systems, and platforms.
Mojitofilms licenses Moji as a white-label AI concierge that integrates directly into cinemas, festivals, streaming platforms, and XR environments. Moji learns user preferences through conversational interaction, supports multilingual communication, enables one-click ticket purchases, and delivers anonymized audience insights. Specifically trained on European films and cultural contexts, Moji boosts audience engagement, improves content discoverability, and promotes the cross-border distribution of European works.
Moji connects film discovery, ticket sales, and analytics
Munich Startup: What can only you do as of today?
Shahram Shahangi: The app is available for Android and iOS. There are more than 23,000 registrations and over 550,000 app downloads. The “Moji Agent” is complete, and we have brought several cinemas on board for testing and integration. If the tests are successful, we will develop the integration for additional cinemas and market the system as a product.
Moji is an AI-powered film concierge for rent that combines interactive film search, ticketing, and audience analytics into a single white-label solution—tailored specifically to European cinemas and festivals.
Unlike traditional recommendation systems or chatbots:
- Moji learns through interaction (text and voice) without tracking users.
- Moji can be directly integrated into platforms of cinemas, festivals, and streaming services via modular APIs.
- Moji enables one-click ticket purchasing directly while searching for movies.
- Moji delivers anonymized audience analytics specifically developed for European audiovisual institutions.
As part of the initial rollout phase, Moji is already being implemented in several cinemas. This gives us a unique, ready-to-use AI agent that connects film discovery, ticket sales, and audience analytics in a way no other solution currently offers.
Munich Startup: What was the trigger for founding the company?
Shahram Shahangi: Mojitofilms started as a consumer app for film discovery on Android and iOS. While the app grew to over 1,000 registrations and more than 1,000 downloads, one feature stood out in particular: the Moji Agent, an AI concierge that helps users discover movies through natural conversation.
In the course of development and user testing, it became clear that Moji was the real innovation. Cinemas and festivals began requesting Moji as a standalone solution, and initial pilot projects confirmed that Moji could solve industry-wide challenges in film discovery, audience engagement, and viewer behavior insights.
This realization led to the creation of Moji as an independent B2B product: an AI concierge specifically designed for cinemas, festivals, and streaming platforms, delivered as a service.
Pivot on the Brink of Giving Up
Munich Startup: Was there a moment when you thought about giving up?
Shahram Shahangi: Yes. In 2025, Mojitofilms’ consumer app faced various challenges, from technical limitations to unclear long-term commercial viability. At that point, discontinuing the app seemed to be the most realistic option.
Yet precisely during this phase, the “Moji Concierge” emerged as the feature that users consistently embraced and valued. What had originally started as a component of the app quickly proved to be the actual innovation: an AI-based conversational agent capable of solving real problems for cinemas and festivals in film discovery and audience engagement.
The realization that Moji was the product with genuine market demand led to a strategic pivot for the company. Instead of shutting down the project, we took a new direction and began developing Moji as an independent, licensable B2B solution. It was this turning point that propelled the company forward.
Mojitofilms was founded in Munich in late 2022, and the first version of the app launched in September 2023. The founder and sole shareholder is Shahram Shahangi. With the AI concierge Moji, the company now primarily targets cinemas, festivals, and streaming platforms.
Shahangi studied Distributed Computing Systems and previously founded the martech company Adnext. In 2018, he also began studying film in Munich. His short film “Tonewood” received awards at international festivals. Following a funding commitment from FFF Bayern, he is currently working on his first feature film. At Mojitofilms, he brings together his experience in computer science, digital marketing, and film.
Munich Startup: How will you know in one year that you are on the right track?
Shahram Shahangi: We will know that we are on the right track once Moji achieves measurable success with the key milestones defined in our roadmap. Within one year, this means:
- Successful pilot projects with institutional partners (major European festivals and cinemas) where Moji is deployed in real audience operations.
- Several live B2B integrations with cinemas, festivals, or cinema chains that use Moji as a film discovery layer.
- Demonstrable increase in ticket sales through Moji’s discovery-to-purchase process and one-click ticketing.
- Active use of Moji’s audience insight dashboards by event organizers to guide programming and scheduling.
- Production-ready, multilingual version of Moji with fully functional, GDPR-compliant infrastructure.
- Initial recurring revenue from B2B licensing and sales enablement partnerships.
Achieving these milestones will confirm that Moji is developing into the AI component that has been missing in the film discovery space and is gaining increasing relevance in the European audiovisual ecosystem.
Munich offers a strong audiovisual ecosystem
Munich Startup: Would you found in Munich again and why?
Shahram Shahangi: Yes. Munich has proven to be one of the strongest locations in Europe for building Moji. The city’s audiovisual ecosystem—from Bavaria Film and leading cinema technology providers to festival networks—was the ideal environment to develop and validate an AI concierge for film discovery.
Munich was where the Mojitofilms app first gained traction and where Moji was originally brought to life. It was also here that we realized Moji wasn’t just a feature, but the exact product the industry actually needed. The proximity to cinemas, ticketing partners, and cultural institutions allowed us to test Moji early on, secure integrations, and refine the B2B model in direct exchange with industry players.
Thanks to this ecosystem, the partnerships, and access to the European audiovisual innovation landscape, Munich remains an extremely important strategic location for Moji, and we would choose this city again anytime.
Munich Startup: Bootstrapping or venture capital?
Shahram Shahangi: Moji started out as a purely bootstrapped project with the development of the Mojitofilms app and the early conception of the Moji Concierge. This self-funding allowed us to validate the technology, develop the AI agent, secure ticket-selling partnerships, and implement initial cinema integrations—all without external pressure.
However, as it became clear that Moji was precisely the product the industry actually needed, it was evident that venture capital would be required to scale the solution across Europe. Rolling it out to institutional partners, expanding into multiple languages, building a GDPR-compliant infrastructure, and establishing strategic partnerships with key players in the audiovisual industry cannot be accelerated through bootstrapping alone.
For this reason, Moji is now seeking venture capital to expand its integrations, strengthen its market presence, and develop into the AI layer that has so far been missing in film discovery.
