Amagi beats India’s growing TV market on fast track; expects business to double in three years

“From a global audience perspective, India has always been one of our fastest growing markets,” Srinivasan KA, co-founder and chief revenue officer of Amagi told him. Mint In the interview.

Amagi, worth over $1 billion, plans to have an IPO, is a platform for broadcast networks and content owners. Its products give customers complete control over the monetization, launching and distribution of their content – ​​whether it is live TV, cable TV, on-demand or even OTT, as well as fast OTT.

Currently, 70% of Amagi’s revenue comes from the United States, while Europe accounts for 20%. India, Asia and Latin America together account for the remaining 10%.

“Global, revenue growth remains unit numbers,” Srinivasan said.

However, given that the rapid model is essentially an Internet-connected service, its viability in the Indian market may still be limited.

“Issues such as bandwidth quality, data costs, limited access in rural areas, etc. are practical limitations. Advertising spending is another issue,” said Probir Roy Chowdhury, an advocate and lawyer partner at JSA. “Advertisers are still engaging in caution and are not investing their budgets fully into this format.”

India has over 200 fast channels that are streaming only on connected TVs (CTVs), which is not for those who watch TV on their phones, phones and computers. Samsung TV, Amazon Mini and Reliance Industries, and Disney’s merged entity JioHotstar are examples of popular fast channels in India. Amagi also calculates LG, TCL and Xiaomi among its customers in India.

The growth of India’s fast model will be driven by the surge in CTV – TVs that can access the Internet and stream content. According to Media Investment Company Groupm This year, next year Report. This is 30% of Indian households with TV.

The shift in India’s fast model is driven by three things: the focus is on digitalization, and smart TVs allow people to access many of the apps that were previously only accessible on phones, phones and laptops, and the fact that the content is no longer a walled garden.

“As the user base grows, the top socio-economic classification tiers of advertisers and other targets will also be available on smart TVs,” said EY-Parthenon’s Digital and Convergence raghav Anand.

Even then, Indian advertisers still need to develop to tap into the rapid wave. While Amagi may be eager to serve Indian companies, advertisers may not be so keen and instead chose their traditional approaches, in which they tried and tested the ROI.

“We may be overestimating how quickly monetization will catch up, especially outside of Level 1 cities,” Roy Chowdhury said.

Driving power of growth

The company said that although the U.S. continues to be the focus of the company, growth rates will not be as high as those in Europe and Latin America.

“Germany and the UK are developing very fast,” said Baskar Subramanian, co-founder and CEO of Amagi. “Brazil and Mexico are big growth drivers. We also see very strong green shooting in Japan.”

According to one PWC’s report. The industry is expected to expand at a CAGR of 8.3% and will become a ₹By 2028, there will be a market of 3.7 trillion.

Over the past few years, revenue from traditional TV (such as radio and cable) has declined, and streaming services and platforms have become increasingly common.

“Traditionally, live sports and live news, especially outside India. A lot of them are being played,” Srinivasan said.

Especially in the United States, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and the National Football League teams have their own mobile apps that provide customers with the option to play games at a price instead of buying tickets to watch the game in person.

“Sports are a growth driver for us and will continue to be a natural result of the fast model. We don’t see a rapid slowdown,” Srinivasan said.

Advertising spending is also expected to be gained as the rapid model grows. In India, GroupM recommends advertising spending to be Rs 1.64 trillion”>7% increase ₹$1.64 trillion, or nearly $20 billion.

Currently, it tends toward numbers. As smart TVs and CTVs increase, hopefully the revenue mix will change. “The idea is that both part of TV ads and part of digital ads can happen on smart TVs now,” Anand said. This could be even more touching on the fast model.

That’s why Amagi is looking to seek acquisitions this year as it tries to build a part of its currently underserved products and business.

“We have a large moat covered, but we continue to evaluate the front of the glass, the lens and the edge of the glass, whether it is monetization or advertising,” Subramanian said.

The company is evaluating businesses operating in three areas: live sports broadcasting, advertising technology solutions and media preparation supply chains.

Some of Amagi’s previous acquisitions also fit in a similar way. A company it acquired in December 2024 provides personalized advice to users on the OTT platform. Tellyo is a field production company acquired earlier last year and is well suited for Amagi’s product ecosystem. StreamWise, a data integration platform for content distributors, was acquired in 2022.

(a)mag(i)

The company is still looking for AI companies, but not too deep.

“AI is a fast-growing space. By the time you start talking to companies, their technology and anything they build, AI is already a little outdated.”

Not that the company has not worked hard to provide value-added AI services to its customers. Amagi implements AI into its ecosystem in two ways: extracting data from original content, i.e., IE, metadata, language, genre classification, quality and format; and the delivery of personalized content, whether it is an advertisement or what people want to watch.

“The personalization field is very suitable for you because content discovery and personalization of advertising and communication is a very large value chain,” Subramanian said.

But, he added for them whether their customers see tangible value from production costs or increased revenue. In this regard, Subramanian said it was too early. ”

The company has started running a proof of concept project with its customers and already has a product called Amagi Now that automates processes in content distribution, such as accurately tagging video content metadata and picking out a portion of the video that best suits Promos. Essentially, the platform allows content tailored on an individual degree that its customers can then use for cross-channel distribution.

Founded in 2008 by Subramanian, Srinivasan and Srividhya Srinivasan, Amagi was originally founded as an advertising solution for TV channels. In 2018, the company revealed its current business model, a platform for the monetization and distribution of video content for broadcast networks and content creators.

Amagi, whose valuation exceeds $1 billion, is working on an initial public offering. The company last raised funds in November 2022 — a round led by the Atlantic General led by more than $100 million, with a valuation of $1.4 billion.

In March of that year, it raised $95 million in a round led by global venture capital firm ACCEL, pushing its valuation to unicorn territory. Prior to that, Amagi raised $100 million from Accel, Avataar Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners in September 2021.

NS Raghavan’s venture capital arm, Nadathur Holdings, entered the company during its seed round, with Premji Investment investing in the Cersies-Series Series C round.