MultiTV offers Video Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) with a mission to simplify video technology experiences. The company that started as a dream is now the pioneer of several video streaming technologies and products with its solutions empowering top media giants.
Recently a few Tech interns sat down with the CEO & Founder of MultiTV, Mr. Vikash Samota to know more about him, his vision, company products, the growth, and expansion plan of the company.
Sir, please tell us something about you and your journey.
After working with Aricent for 3 years in the US, I turned entrepreneur in 2012. I built a profitable software solution company that serviced [15] customers and 100 employees within 3 years. I then handed it to the team to co-own and manage that company, as I wanted to pursue my dream. The opportunity to build a Video tech PaaS company was my calling and I am immersed in building “MultiTV” into a leading company globally in this domain.
I founded this company in Dec 2014 and we started our operations from June 2015 with a staff of just 10 people. Then we built our 1stproduct in April 2016 and within 2017 we became the Niche Player in the video Domain with our office in Mumbai. In the year 2018, we have reached 25 + Engineers and 50 Customers like Idea, Vodafone, Times, Zee5. And till mid-2019 we became quite the industry leader in 3 products having more than 100 + customers from fortune 500.
Tell us something about your workforce and their value systems
We at MULTI TV are a family of 100+ engineering teams with a cumulative experience of over 500+ years in video technology. This team is widely spread in our sales and support offices in 6 locations. We believe we have a build a full stack of technology solutions that are globally competitive and has been used by over 200+ companies. We are constantly innovating and looking to offer a seamless and WOWexperience to our customers. I believe we have only scratched the surface and the world is truly our oyster.
We believe in teamwork and building relationships by going beyond the individual, encouraging boundaryless behavior. We also believe in providing adequate growth opportunities to our employees by indulging them in proper training programs and sessions. Our team makes a conscious effort to cherish life-long commitment to deepen our self-awareness, explore, experiment, and improve our potential. We value a deep sense of responsibility and self-discipline to meet and surpass commitment made by us to our team, clients, and customers. We Valueintellectual modesty and detest false pride and arrogance.
We are building a company where all employees strive for 100%+ customer satisfaction, total teamwork, focus on getting things done, and treat each one with respect and humility.
Can you guide us to your products that are successfully running in the market?
We have many products that help in the smooth delivery of exceptional online video experiences with best-in-class technology. Few of our most successful products are:
CREATOR is an aggregated one-stop OTT solution, which automatically manages your video content execution. It gives businesses a platform to market their video content as a personalized viewing experience and monetize their content on their terms. It is an integrated dashboard that controls, configures, manages, and analyses the whole OTT service chain with ease. With features like Transcoding& Encoding, Video Content Management System, Subscriber management system, Ad Detection & Insertion, Video delivery, and User & revenue analytics u can get round-the-clock, glitch-free downlink for any live TV channel and stream your event to multiple channels, digital platforms of your choice conveniently and smoothly.
BeLIVE is a platform to broadcast and watch live videos on your mobile. You can Watch LIVE plays, stand-up comedies, music performances, launch events on Mobile. Broadcast a corporate meeting internationally, stream wedding function of our loved ones with relatives spread across the World. With features like private streaming, live chats, replays, social sharing, etc. Large product launches, corporate meetings, huge events hosting thousands of people who were put on hold because of the pandemic have been successfully carried out through BeLIVE.
STREAMLINE is a bundled multiscreen transcoder and encoder that enables automated content ingestion, transformation, and delivery with on-demand archiving. Streamline is one of the most cost-efficient ways of getting your video content transcoded into multiple bitrates. By transcoding, we can easily stream our video content in multiple formats, multiple bitrates, and multiple definitions over any device.
PULSE you can say is a First of its kind comprehensive TV ad delivery and tracking platform. Dethroning the conventional TV ad tracking from a traditional method and presenting all the analytics metrics, statistically and graphically available to you at a single platform in real-time. With Pulse, we make sure that every ad is tagged and identified correctly making sure a 100% accuracy through our fingerprinting technology. And then based on that analytical data we categorize ad tracking via a number of plays, types of brand, channel, and ad creative. This tool has been a great revenue generator for our customers and clients?
What was the motivating factor that led to the idea of MultiTV?
During my working stay with Aricent for 3 years in the US, I realized the growing trend in the OTT sectors and the online video industry sector as a whole. That was the time when people were getting more into smartphones and technologies. Mr. Zuckerberg was busily spreading his wings buying social media apps like Instagram and wats app to his tally. video callings, conferences, small video shoots from smartphones were becoming quite a popular hit in no time. The OTT concept has just entered and taken on the industry with a boom. Many new players were entering into this field with there unique programming and we knew that it is going to become a household name any time soon. With the sector growing at a huge pace we knew there is going to be huge scope for industries that would provide support to these sectors and help this sector run smoothly with there technical assistance. That was the time when we came up with the idea of MultiTV. And then one thing led to another the demand for streaming services started rising, corporate events, product launches, official meetings, online training modules, and that is still on the rise.
Who are your target customers & how big is your market?
Video has transformed habits across the entire age spectrum. Consumers demand live and on-demand personalized experience, leading businesses to adapt and innovate fast. The explosion of live streaming, online gaming, ed-tech, health tech, retail commerce has created a behemoth $45 Billion market for video technology. VIdeo requirements are consistently increasing across Enterprises, Media & Telecom, Sports & Events, and Retail & Brands verticals and these are the 4 verticals which we are sharply focusing on.
What is the business model for your company?
We offer our solutions via two business models
- Annuity i.e annual contracts and subscriptions
- Per-use i.e per-project basis- just one event/one-time use.
- Pricing will vary according to the number of subscription hours purchased monthly.
What are your plans for the next 1 year?
I think the coming year will have a huge impact on the market and how companies do their business. As and when the pandemic ends it will be interesting to see the path that the companies around the globe choose to follow. I am pretty much sure that the entertainment sector will provide good business with all the live sporting events coming back in full flow, take cricket for example 2 IPLs 1 world cup in just 1 year, That certainly means a lot of business. But that rest of the industries are unsure about how they are going to keep their day to day business because as of today everything is going virtually online and the feedback is that many companies are happy with this process and are planning to go forward with it. As far as we at MultiTV are concerned we are quite positive about the coming year. We surely are one of the key players of this industry if not the leaders which we certainly thrive to become. And with the quality of the workforce that we have, we are filled with quite a number of innovative ideas at our desk. A lot of those ideas are actually under work and you will see them creating a buzz in the market in the next few months.
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who want to start from scratch?
For any new venture, I think it is important to have a clear head. Thanks to technology, no idea is tough enough to execute. The important thing is that one should make short term plans directing towards the ultimate goals and should restrain from making too rigid plans. The presentation of our ideas is also a very important aspect when starting a new business to raise funds or obtain any necessary support required. Any investor who is willing to spend his/her time, efforts and funds into your business needs to have a clear image of what you want to do.
Sir, what has been the impact of this COVID19 on you personally?
On work front, it was a bit tough. I am someone who would work very closely with all my employees one-on-one. For me, personal interaction is very important to my team and my clients. And due to this COVID situation that came to a halt which wasn’t a pleasant sight to be around. But you just can’t fight nature.
