Dilip Venkatraman, a veteran in the News broadcasting space, in 2015 decided to turn Entrepreneur. He wanted to start a digitally dynamic startup venture that would show news bulletins personalized to one’s taste and offer interactive video playlists with curated content based on one’s preference. That is how Video Tap was conceived, a cloud-based interactive smart video platform that offers real-time video compilations, interactivity on videos and direct-to-scene watching can transform the world of video content for users as well as advertisers
This platform, helps producers to curate their uploaded video content, create ‘smart videos’ and publish them using Design Room — a proprietary cloud-based video tagging, curating, and authoring software.
Recently Video Tap won 7 US patents which have been co-invented by Dilip Venkatraman Founder and CEO and Savvy Dilip, COO, spoke to us about this venture and winning the US patents
How was this idea conceived?
Dilip: When we were working with news television media, I always felt that I could not find the news I was looking for in the news bulletins. It used to frustrate me especially when I knew that all the stories of my interest were probably available in every Newsroom. News editors in the newsroom always had to deal with the restrictive nature of the linear delivery of video content, where they had to constantly keep prioritizing content.
The weekly data obtained from a less than perfect rating system, especially for niche categories only increased the complexity of the content prioritization. Any news consumer always was and is, forced to live with a one-size-fits-all news bulletin.
This led us to start work on a non-linear delivery solution, which eventually morphed into what is VideoTap, today.
How did the idea to apply for US patents occur?
Savvy: We are not the first startup to get US Patents. However, we are one the few startups who applied for US patents from the beginning.
We were clear that we were building an international product, targeted at the US market. As the US is the biggest market and where IP is fiercely competitive and defendable, we filed for US patents. We filed for 8 US patents and have got 7 grants. This is a significant internal milestone for VideoTap.
What is your first-mover advantage with these 7 US patents?
Dilip: We hope to emerge as a new category. One advantage is clear brand recall, as the space will not be cluttered.
The first movers also do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to market development.
This technology is to bring intervention to the older video format?
Savvy: We have built a Self Service Authoring Platform called Design Suite, where a content producer can upload Linear Videos, Author them and convert them and publish them as Multi-Functional Videos. The Design Suite is easy to use, cloud-based and accessed using a desktop browser, quite comprehensive and comes with more than 1500 features. VideoTap makes it convenient for video content producers to repurpose existing content, rejuvenate them and make the video content ready for multi-functional video experiences.
The platforms you will be approaching for sharing this technology?
Dilip: We have tested our technology with video ads and have delivered more than 14 times engagement as compared to regular linear video ads. We serve multi-functional videos, which literally behave like video websites, wherein a consumer can navigate, participate, engage, and get additional info of trigger call to action, all within the video. We are also having active discussions with e-learning companies, marketing departments of companies, news broadcasters, e-commerce companies and media agencies.
How will you tap into both B2B and B2C markets?
Savvy: We are a B2B SaaS platform, and we will help video content producers across categories like marketing, e-Learning, News, Sports, Entertainment, e-Commerce and Advertising, deliver ‘effective’ viewing experiences, increase consumer engagement and achieve better ROI. However, all our customers will be B2C companies.
Will you also target the OTT platforms separately?
Dilip: Our target customers are content producers and owners, so any OTT platform which has its own content or broadcast channels can be our customer.
