Videoverse offers AI tool to help enterprise videos go viral

Every day around the world, billions of people are watching online videos — they’re quickly becoming the go-to choice when it comes to content consumption.

The average person watches 2.5 hours of online video a day, and they increasingly prefer and expect video content to learn about a product and that they have been swayed to buy a product after watching a video.

In fitting with this, digital ad spending is increasingly surpassing traditional media spending. In fact, according to Emarketer, U.S. digital ad spending will grow by nearly 50% over the next four years, topping $300 billion, or more than three-quarters of all media spending.

All told, IMARC Group expects the global digital video content market to reach just over $391.1 billion by 2027, up from $151.4 billion in 2021. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 13%.

Without a doubt, videos are a critical part of any business’ marketing strategy. But — if they want people to view them at least — companies need to refine, edit and finish these videos.

Improving corporate video production

This has made room for a growing number of companies that help to create and process enterprise online video content. Among these is Mumbai-headquartered Videoverse, formerly Toch.ai. The company offers an AI-powered video editing software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that instantly and automatically processes content.

The company today announced its new name and the securement of $46.8 million in series B funding.

“The future belongs to AI-led content production,” said Videoverse cofounder and CEO Vinayak Shrivastav. “It is the only option for anyone looking to stay ahead in the video content game.”

The six-year-old company’s algorithms automatically meta-tag images, video and text, as well as process content for context and identify key moments. Its AI models are trained to detect moments as they occur and render them into new micro-content video assets, auto resized and optimized for different social platforms and one-click publishing.

Videoverse’s AI-powered flagship product Magnifi provides real-time video highlight technology for sports, entertainment, and news. Its Styck platform enables one-click simultaneous livestream across multiple social media accounts, and its Illusto web-based studio editor helps users create video while on the go. Businesses can auto-create and share customized content via existing live or recorded feeds, Shrivastav said.

“This empowers our enterprise customers to re-purpose their content and reach out to viewers in real-time and thereby increase fan engagement and get more monetization from the same piece of content,” he said.

AI enters the film scene

Founded in 2016, the company has scanned more than 12.9 million hours of video and helped save companies an estimated 1.2 billion hours of processing time. Its products have reduced time to edit by 95%, cut manpower by nearly half and resulted in two to three times higher engagement.

“AI is the future, and AI-led technology will dictate how companies best use their content going forward,” Shrivastav said. “To remain competitive, companies have to get on the AI train and adopt future technologies, which will help them not only go to market quicker but also tell better stories and produce content at scale. Viewers want to engage with content in real time, and for enterprises that is only possible with the deployment of AI.”

The raised capital will be used to strengthen Videoverse’s teams in India and internationally, enhance the company’s technology, build newer products, and expand global market share, Shrivastav said.

The funding round was led by A91 Partners, Alpha Wave Global and Binny Bansal, former cofounder of Flipkart, with support from Innoven Capital, Pacific Western Bank and Stride Ventures. The company previously raised an $11.75 million Series A round in October 2021.