The last few years have witnessed an exponential growth in the number of video platforms. E-learning businesses, schools, colleges, and movie/web-series platforms are all relying on the online distribution and monetisation of videos. But video piracy poses a major risk for anybody who is trying to make money from online premium videos or protect their copyrighted content.
Gurugram-based VdoCipher Media Solutions is addressing the problem of video piracy helping platforms to protect their video revenues. Serving almost 2000+ e-learning and media platforms from 40+ countries, VdoCipher boasts of customers spanning all six continents.
Combating piracy through cloud-based encryption
Back in 2015, Vibhav Sinha and Siddhant Jain were studying engineering at IIT-Delhi at a time when online video piracy was rampant. Vibhav, at that time, was working as a freelancer on a cloud project while undertaking a course on video encryption. Triggered the idea of combining these two led to the birth of VdoCipher.
“We have released a beta-secured player and wanted to test it out in the market, before going for the full product. We also wanted to check whether India has the kind of market we were looking for in our startup. So, finally, we got hold of two major clients who confirmed that they have piracy issues and were seeking effective solutions. Thus, we thought that the time is here to release our whole product, post which we got our first few customers. So, by the time we graduated, we were already working for half a dozen customers,” said Siddhant.
VdoCipher emerged from the idea of combating piracy through cloud-based encryption with cloud rendered video playback. “We wanted to create something that would be effective for every business, irrespective of their size and magnitude. We can find loads of small or medium-sized e-learning and media platforms that can’t get access to the kind of security required owing to the pricing and technological challenge. Thus, we thought of a solution that would cater to both single-owner businesses and large enterprises,” he added.
Offering Netflix-like video security
The value proposition of VdoCipher for its security features makes the company stronger than competitors, according to Siddhant. “The primary challenge is to prevent illegal video downloads. Our own DRM encryption technology expands to digital rights management, and we have implemented this for the prevention of video download. Platforms like Hotstar and Netflix also implement the same kind of technology for securing content. Thus, we take pride in claiming that our security solutions are Hollywood-graded, as even the largest Hollywood studios depend on similar technologies for securing videos,” he explained.
VdoCipher also provides screen-capture block security for mobile applications, and for certain browsers, it can successfully block screen capture. “We have viewer-specific watermarking. For instance, if a customer is watching a video being hosted by us, then the customer can use their details like a user id or number and overlay it as a watermark. The solution discourages the idea of any kind of screen or camera capture,” added Siddhant.
Thus, from a single teacher owning a website to a large edtech platform with millions of users – everybody can have access to the secured product. How does VdoCipher make it happen? To this, Siddhant reveals that creating easy integration was one of their primary goals, as integration is a major challenge of the video technology business. “We made sure that even smaller teams with zero-coding experience can opt for the highest security. Right now, we have several independent teachers in India who use our solutions to release their courses online. Also, we have large enterprises as a part of our clientele, so in terms of size, we are able to cater solutions to both extremes,” he added.
Sharing an interesting anecdote, Siddhant recalled how they acquired a customer during the primary stage who had a movie platform. The platform catered to thousands of Somalians staying in Norway, who used to watch both old and new Bollywood movies dubbed in their language. “People say that Bollywood has a global fanbase, and witnessing Somalians watching Bollywood classics made me realise the magnitude of Bollywood movies,” he said.
Overcoming challenges
Statistically speaking, VdoCipher generated Rs 3 crore and 30 million views for customers. “As an angel-funded startup initially in 2016-17 without any VC backing, it’s always been cash conservation for us with a focus on organic means of customer acquisition. However, our goal was to create an overall sustainable and profitable business, and yes we have successfully created that,” said Siddhant.
Another challenge, which is again quite common in any security business, is to keep updating with time, and VdoCipher has dedicatedly done this while introducing new security features over time as well as updating the pre-existing ones.
“We not only provide security, but complete video hosting solutions listing a managing dashboard, cloud-based hosting, and a default, easy-to-use video player which can operate on any device. Discussing the product roadmap, we would like to talk about the analytics which showcases the video completion rate and video-watch time, and are on the verge of releasing a new video player which would be easy to use, customisable, and better than before,” added Siddhant.
The way ahead
VdoCipher has witnessed a YOY growth with regards to revenue and customers, with a significant percentage being from overseas. “We are fortunate to get customers all across the globe almost every month. We are striving to become the default video-hosting provider and solution platform for e-learning businesses across more countries, and making a name in building trusted solutions around video security globally,” conjectures Siddhant.
