In this exclusive interview with OTTVerse, Srividhya Srinivasan, the Co-founder of Amagi, talks about how the adoption of FAST has been growing in the last few years, how Gen AI is being used in the media technology and the growth of Amagi from startup to a unicorn.
Srividhya Srinivasan is the Co-Founder & Chief Customer Success Officer of Amagi. Amagi is a global provider of SaaS technology for end-to-end cloud-managed live and on-demand video infrastructure for TV and OTT. Founded in 2008, Amagi has grown into a cloud technology leader enabling TV networks and content owners to launch, manage, distribute and monetize live, linear, and on-demand channels across cable, OTT, Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FAST) platforms, worldwide.
Watch this exclusive interview here –
[00:00:03.910] – Jan Ozer
Hi, I’m Jan Ozer. I’m sitting today with Vidya from AMAGI, who is the Chief Customer Success Officer. Thanks for joining, Vidya.
[00:00:11.830] – Srividhya
Thank you very much.
[00:00:12.650] – Jan Ozer
Why don’t you take a minute and tell us who AMAGI is and who you serve?
[00:00:17.220] – Srividhya
Yeah, AMAGI is a SaaS media platform, and we provide a cloud-based software by which we can take the content from the content providers to the audience using cloud platforms.
[00:00:31.210] – Jan Ozer
How are your customers monetizing that video at this point?
[00:00:34.050] – Srividhya
Content partners can monetize these videos in multiple ways, and we actually deliver their content to FAST platforms, which is free ad-supported streaming TV, as well as to broadcast platforms. In Free Ad-supported Streaming TV, it is monetized by programmatic ads, and in broadcast platforms, it’s monetized by traditional advertising.
[00:00:54.420] – Jan Ozer
FAST is a term that seemed to pop up out of nowhere the last two or three years. What are the market forces that push that forward?
[00:01:01.620] – Srividhya
I think all along people wanted a easy option by which they can watch content and FAST became available on CTV platforms, connected TV platforms. You buy a Samsung TV+, you buy a Vizio TV, you can directly start watching content. It makes it very compelling, and people don’t have to subscribe or do a transaction or do any of those. And the fact that they can watch it instantly makes it very interesting. And that’s the reason why this market force is coming.
[00:01:28.080] – Jan Ozer
How much of your business is now related to FAST technologies or FAST channels as opposed to where it was two or three years ago?
[00:01:36.010] – Srividhya
Currently, 60% of the business comes for FAST, and the other business from the broadcast, we still have about 40%. But broadcast, the line between broadcast and FAST are slowly moving away. Mainstream broadcast content providers are now coming to FAST platforms, and people who created content for the YouTube and for the FAST platforms are also using other ways by which they can reach customers like SVOD and AVOD and other platforms. So the line between all these platforms is slowly shrinking.
[00:02:07.990] – Jan Ozer
How have your products changed to allow your customers to succeed in these FAST channels? What have you done to help them succeed?
[00:02:16.420] – Srividhya
Amagi has done a lot of innovations in the FAST market. We always wanted our customers to win, and hence we should win. For example, we introduced a new product called Elastic Playout, by which, when a content is streamed through a linear channel, the customer never sees a slate. However, the content gets pulled in and pulled out based on how much of ads the customers watched. Eventually, the customers watched adequate amount of content as well as ads, so the content partner is able to monetize this content. At the same time, the viewer is happy and everyone are happy, and in turn, Amagi also makes money. This is a brand new product which we introduced in this year.
[00:02:53.900] – Jan Ozer
AI has been a buzzword. How are you using AI in your products to help your customers to be more successful?
[00:03:06.690] – Srividhya
Your question is very, very relevant. Today in this world, everyone feels that without AI, there is no way a company can move forward quickly. And Amagi has actually adapted to the needs of AI. In fact, the content management system which we built for our content providers is actually a semantic CMS which can allow them to query things on a LLM-based query. So it could be like, “Give me all the content which is vegan, and create a collection and schedule it from next week for about one week”. So we can write queries like this through our system, and the system would automatically create it. This is possible only through Gen AI technologies, and we are very proud to announce those products in this year. In addition to this, through our analytics platform, customer can ask questions like, “Take all the most watched content of last year and schedule it during Christmas in this year. Or schedule it during a different season in this year”. So you can give queries like this, and we adapted Gen AI across all products of Amagi such that the customer gets a unified experience.
[00:04:11.920] – Jan Ozer
When you say Gen AI, you’re talking about Generative AI? Yes. Why don’t you go through the difference between machine learning and Gen AI for people who don’t know the difference and why that’s important to what it allows your products to do?
[00:04:23.420] – Srividhya
Even today, it’s true that not all problems can be solved through Gen AI. Maybe they can be solved over a period of time, but at least currently not. I’ll give you an example. For example, Amagi has a product by which you can automatically detect ad breaks. This solution does not use Generative AI. It is based on identifying the scene changes in the video and identifying the audio pauses wherein you can take a break. So this doesn’t need Generative AI, so we don’t use it. However, when you provide an interface by which you want to take a complex command from a content provider, then that can be through the Generative AI. So we need to purpose and use the technology for its right place, and that’s what we are doing.
[00:05:06.980] – Jan Ozer
What does the Chief Customer Success Officer do?
[00:05:11.080] – Srividhya
I want to make sure that Amagi’s customers are happy, and they should love our products, they should love our service, due to which they come back to us for newer and newer products, and that’s what the title is supposed to do.
[00:05:23.610] – Jan Ozer
How does that relate to sales and marketing? Where do you fit in the general schema of things like that?
[00:05:29.030] – Srividhya
I work closely with sales and marketing. The moment a customer has licensed an Amagi’s solution or has opted for a Amagi’s service, then the customer success team comes into play. So the customer success team is responsible for onboarding the customer, providing the customizations they need, taking the customer live, being with the customer for understanding newer products that they would need or what are the challenges they face, and then suggesting them the solution and working closely with the sales and continuing the journey with the customer in Amagi.
[00:06:01.540] – Jan Ozer
How long is that process? It seems like it’s pretty major surgery. I mean, you’re changing your entire system to a different one. How long does that take?
[00:06:10.190] – Srividhya
So it depends on the customer, and it depends on what problem we are trying to solve. We have had cases where we have a customer where we have gone live in about two weeks. We also had customers who are doing a long cloud migration, and these projects can go on for one year, one year to two years. It depends on what we do with the customer and how complex is the migration or the operation we do with the customers.
[00:06:33.380] – Jan Ozer
So your background is engineering. How does an engineer become a people person? I mean, that’s not a transition I’ve seen a lot of engineers make.
[00:06:40.450] – Srividhya
Yeah. So engineer builds solutions for the customers. So if you’re near to the customer, you can understand what are their pain points, you can understand what they want to do, and take the feedback internally and build more interesting solutions. And that’s what I do.
[00:06:55.180] – Jan Ozer
Do you have any good examples of features that were suggested by customers and how long it took for those be implemented?
[00:07:00.930] – Srividhya
Absolutely. Amagi simply lives by this mindset. We work very closely with customers. We work with very progressive customers who will be our learning partners, who will actually help us to build our product over time. For example, recently, we have a cloud-based live production solution, which I’m sure it’s meant for a very low-end game, like something like a tier three, tier four game. So they would start with that. They will use our product and they will tell us that if these features are there, then I can take it to the next level. And then we will build those features, and then we will provide it to them. And slowly over time, it comes into a state where it’s ready for the mainstream market, and then it can be adapted for the mainstream market. So there are several examples of Amagi doing that. One example of Amagi is that the screen which you see at the back is our cloud port solution. If I show you the very first version of the cloud port solution, it looked like a black screen. In fact, the color of the screen was white and black, and it was like that.
[00:07:59.770] – Srividhya
And it was one of customers’ feedback who told that people actually use this product on a dark room. And therefore, it’s better to have a dark theme. So from there it started. Amagi’s live solution, Amagi’s live PCR solutions, Amagi’s SSAI And even the zero slate were all based on what we understood, observed from the customers and where we heard feedback from them. We enhance our products only by listening to customers.
[00:08:27.210] – Jan Ozer
So you’re based in India. Did you start selling to customers in India and then went worldwide, or did you start in other markets? You’re over a billion dollar valuation now. Walk us through the two-minute version of how that happened?
[00:08:45.030] – Srividhya
Amagi can be looked at from 2000… I mean, we started this company in about 2008. We can look at the journey of Amagi from 2008 to ’15, and then from ’15 till now. For brevity, I will ignore the one between ’08 to ’15 because we were running a Geo-targeted Advertising business in India. But in 2015, we pivoted our business to say that we will do a cloud-based media solution for worldwide customers. So we took this decision in 2015, and then we came to this very same NAB Show in 2015. In fact it’s 10th year for Amagi. So we came to the show and we had a single desk NAB demo for our customer. That’s where our journey began. So we started providing cloud-based playout solution, and we also provided solutions by which you can do masking of a certain content in certain regions. So that’s where we started. Initially, we sold our solutions, that is cloud-based solutions, to customers in India, customers in APAC region, customers in EMEA, until about 2017. And about 2017, 2018, we came to US. And luckily, at that time, the FAST market was just starting.
[00:09:55.490] – Srividhya
And I think by luck, we were at this right place at the right time. So we got hold of those platforms and explained to them that we can deliver channels to them directly from the cloud. And then we worked with the content partners who were primarily using only YouTube as a monetization solution. They wanted to come to the FAST platforms, and we helped them reach the FAST platforms like Roku, Samsung, and so on using Amagi’s solution. And slowly the market grew. I think by luck and by hard work, the team is at the place where we are.
[00:10:29.310] – Jan Ozer
Indian market is very complicated because of the multiple languages. If you can make it in India, can you make it anywhere, or does that not apply?
[00:10:37.050] – Srividhya
I agree with you. In fact, I always feel that that’s one of the reasons why we are able to have the resilience to work with any customer from any region. We recently expanded to LATAM, and I could see complete correlation between India and LATAM. So this kind of thing happened to Amagi only because of our first introduction with India, then with APAC, and then with EMEA, and then to US.
[00:11:03.010] – Jan Ozer
Is running a bigger company more fun, more pressure, more heartache, or all the above?
[00:11:09.260] – Srividhya
It’s always fun. I never do things which don’t make me happy. It’s fun, but it’s a different kind of fun than from running a startup company wherein you do everything that is needed for the customer to running a larger company wherein there are nearly about 900 employees now. It’s a very different ball game.
[00:11:30.710] – Jan Ozer
Okay. And this is your third startup, your second startup?
[00:11:33.680] – Srividhya
This is our second startup.
[00:11:34.580] – Jan Ozer
How big did your first startup get?
[00:11:37.570] – Srividhya
First one was the first company we started straight after college, spending about two years working for a company called Texas Instruments, which is a VLSI chip-making company. So that company, I mean, the first company which we did was a Bluetooth company. We built Bluetooth devices like Bluetooth headsets. We built the solutions and we exited the company when we were about just 54 employees. So it’s a very small venture. After that, we started Amagi in 2009, and it still keeps us busy.
[00:12:09.960] – Jan Ozer
Okay, well, you are busy, and I’ll let you get back to it. But thanks for spending time with us today.
[00:12:13.790] – Srividhya
Thank you very much for the conversation.
Disclaimer: The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and conciseness