Bengaluru-based startup Rocketium giving people the power of videos

Rocketium's platform helps create profes sional-looking videos

When Satej Sirur and Anurag Dwivedi were working at cab aggregator TaxiForSure, they wanted to drive a new business. So in 2015, after TaxiForSure was sold to Ola and with the outburst of video content across categories, the duo utilised their computer science background and founded Rocketium, a platform which lets anyone create professional-looking videos. 

Videos are effective in conveying a message but take a lot of time to create and require designers. The Rocketium team wanted to enable everyone to create dynamic and engaging content. At first, they experimented with slideshow versions of written articles on social media, which were later transformed into videos on the customer demand. With over two-thirds of the internet bandwidth consumed by videos, the computer science graduates saw an opportunity in the sector and came up with a software which automates the work of a digital designer.

“A typical 60-second video today requires two to three hours, a professional video designer, and a high-end computer for video rendering. On Rocketium, the same video can be created in 15-30 minutes,” explained Sirur, saying the company is trying to change the digital experience like Adobe.

The Bengaluru-based start-up recently raised Rs 20 million from Blume Ventures and angel investors such as TaxiForSure CEO Raghunandan G, BigBasket HR Head Hari TN, and senior management from Apple, Freshworks, Microsoft, and SpaceX. 

Opportunity

Rocketium founders Anurag Dwivedi (left) and Satej Sirur

What a Wordpress does for websites, Rocketium is trying to do the same for videos where you can write a series of text, link each of them with an image, customise the styling according to your needs and then the software stitches all together to produce a video. 

With news organisations in India embracing technology, social media, and mobile are reaching an ever-growing audience. People have a short attention span and want bite-sized and appealing content. The opportunity is larger when it comes to non-English speaking audiences who are hungry for good video content. The start-up also has translation services to make videos in over a 100 languages, catering to this audience, said Sirur. 

Revenue model

It is a subscription-based platform where businesses pay monthly to create videos. There is also a free version which has got the start-up a lot of visibility but the videos created here have the company’s watermark. The typical cost per video is Rs 100 and it goes down as customers make more videos.

The company, which already has its 90 per cent market in the US and the UK, will be using the funds to expand its global footprint further by hiring sales and marketing talent and building a machine intelligence team to further automate the video creation process. Over 5,000 media channels, non-profit organisations and universities from 57 countries use Rocketium to create videos on a daily basis. 

The company clocked in a revenue of Rs 15 million in the previous financial year and is looking at the Rs 60-million revenue mark by the end of this financial year. Over the next three-five years, it is also looking to launch products customised for e-commerce, advertising, and learning.

However, not all businesses have adopted videos and the company has to educate these about the power of video. The Rocketium team believes a picture speaks a thousand words but videos do a lot more with motion and sound. “The rise of the video is undeniable and will continue for many more years. We are confident we will soon not have to convince anyone about the need for videos,” said Sirur.

Fact Box

• Founded: 2015
• Area of business: Video content creation and editing
• Plans: Building a machine intelligence team to further automate video creation process
• Funding: Rs 20 million from Blume Ventures and angel investors

Sanket Shah CEO, InVideo

Expert take: 'It’s best-suited for small businesses’
 

Rocketium has most of the editing features required. It has built a great stable product. It is easy to start using its services with no setup. 
 

I believe intelligent video editors will generate over $1.5 billion a year in revenue in the next three years. India itself will become huge in video consumption because of the growing literacy rate, etc. 
 

Each and every business, big or small, will have to use videos across the world.
 

I feel Rocketium is best-suited for small and medium businesses and individuals. It won't really face any issues with scaling in that domain. 

Overall, it is a humungous market worldwide.

However, at that scale, they will want to maintain the same percentage of paying customers if not more. I will be proud to see them take over that entire market. The market is growing very fast as well.
 

But, currently, their business model is slightly low ticket size.