Sukhy wrote (emphasis added):

2.  Their current aim is to have a collaboration solution in place (for one department first) - have this as a use case and retro-fit this/plug it into a at a later stage, an organization wide KM strategy.  They work with academicians, policy makers, researchers towards cutting edge stuff and want a medium to be able to collaborate between various contracted individuals worldwide.  List of products they are currently producing are murals, meeting minutes, flyers, cartoon/animations, podcasts, whitepapers, publications.  They need the solution to have the ability to (a) store/classify/use/re-use this in to converted knowledge (from information and data).

The simplest way to get started on something like this might be Slack + Google Enterprise. (or MS Teams). Slack is designed for bottom/up adoption and stickiness. I wouldn't overthink this, especially if, as you say, they are operating as a startup. Just do it. 

-Tom

Tom Short Consulting
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