100ms, the dwell video conferencing infrastructure startup primarily based in India, has raised $20 million in Sequence A funding to energy the following era of dwell video apps, coming barely 5 months after they closed the seed spherical.
This newest spherical was led by Falcon Edge’s Alpha Wave Incubation, with participation from Matrix Companions India and LocalGlobe, and current traders Accel and Try.vc. It brings to $24.5 million the entire funding raised by the startup.
The startup was based in 2020 throughout covid lockdown with its founders eager to construct an app that may allow individuals in India to look at dwell matches.
“We determined to construct a product, which enabled customers to look at matches on the app, and have video calls with their pals to benefit from the match. We researched the options obtainable on the market and selected one of many current video SDK suppliers to do this; it took us 4 months to get the product working,” 100ms co-founder and CEO, Kshitij Gupta advised TechCrunch.
“And that’s when it began, we have been like no, on this new world, the place most experiences are going to be by means of dwell movies it shouldn’t take 4 months to construct such platforms,” added Gupta, who co-founded the startup with Aniket Behera and Sarvesh Dwivedi.
The trio had beforehand labored at Disney-Hotstar, one of many largest streaming platforms in India, with Gupta having further expertise as dwell video infrastructure venture supervisor at Meta.
The problem they skilled to construct the app impressed them to create dwell video infrastructure to permit corporations, starting from these in edtech, health and leisure so as to add Zoom-like video conferencing inside their apps and livestream the apps to platforms like YouTube and Fb.
It took them about 9 months to construct the brand new product, making it potential for corporations to combine, take a look at and go dwell inside every week.
“Most corporations shrink back from constructing this know-how as a result of it is rather advanced…We’re concentrating on any enterprise attempting to embed video inside their software. It could possibly be an edtech firm doing on-line lessons, a well being tech firm who’s doing telehealth calls between a physician and a affected person or anyone promoting one thing by way of dwell commerce,” mentioned Gupta.
The startup has skilled 20 occasions development over the past quarter as demand for his or her product continues to rise at the same time as dwell experiences proceed to be the norm. Since August final yr over 2,200 companies have used 100ms dwell video infrastructure together with the Frontrow and WhiteHat Jr; each edtech platforms, Circle; a platform for creators and types, Paytm Insider; a dwell occasions platform and Kutumb; a group app.
“I feel the explanation why quite a lot of this acceleration has occurred is as a result of we cut back integration time. We additionally need to construct template fashions that corporations can use to customise the dwell occasions for a extra real-world expertise…for us, we really feel that this would be the starting of our metaverse journey,” mentioned Behera, who started-off as a banker earlier than pivoting to a profession in tech.
They plan to make use of the funding to broaden its crew together with hiring extra video engineers, as they work so as to add extra capabilities to the product.
Falcon Edge’s Alpha Wave Incubation’s managing director, Anirudh Singh, whereas commenting about investing in 100ms mentioned, “On-line gyms are asking trainees to report their accidents. On-line colleges are including libraries, and enabling 1-1 assist classes. On-line relationship apps wish to recreate higher digital assembly experiences. 100ms is enabling product makers to think about and add subtle live-engagement, by abstracting the complexities of video streaming.”