Online video analytics start-up Vidooly has raised Rs 6.4 crore from venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, which was among the first investors in LinkedIn and Skype.
Founded by Ajay Mishra in 2014 along with friends Subrat Kar and Nishant Radia, Vidooly will use the money on product development and to expand its team.
“We are excited to partner with them early in their journey of creating a video analytics product,” said Aakash Goel, Vice-President for Bessemer in India. “This will help further expand the video ecosystem by giving intelligent and actionable insights to creators, multi-channel networks and brands.”
Noida-based Vidooly helps content creators, brands and multi channel networks to build an audience base on YouTube and earn more revenues. Its technology enables customers to track their competitors and offer features such as video tag suggestion, best time to upload and search rank analysis.
“Content creators are putting a lot of efforts to create good quality content, but the problem is that they find it difficult in targeting the right kind of audience to watch their content. This is where we step in,” said Vidooly chief executive Subrat Kar.
Since it’s beta launch in November 2014, Vidooly has added over 2000 YouTube channels like Bollywood Hungama, beauty portal Glamrs, India Food Network and Appu Series, a channel for kids. Nearly 120,000 videos are uploaded every month through Vidooly’s network. Its big data engine analyses over 500 million monthly videos through its platform.
Vidooly is Bessemer’s second investment in the video platform space globally after Vidyard, that helps firms use online video to boost sales. In January, Canada-based Vidyard raised $18 million (Rs 115 crore) at a valuation close to $100 million (Rs 641 crore) in a round led by Bessemer.
Experts say with rapidly growing smartphone and internet penetration, India has become a large market for video consumption. Internet video traffic in India is expected to grow nine-fold between 2013 and 2018, according to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index. Internet video traffic will reach 2.2 exabytes per month in 2018 or 72% of all internet traffic in India.
“When we met Vidooly’s team we knew that they are onto something that is a big pain point for video creators, publishers and multi-channel networks,” said Abhishek Gupta, head of TLabs, an accelerator that is incubating Vidooly.
