Riding on Periscope and Meerkat's live-streaming wave, India's InstaLively raises funding
New Delhi-based InstaLively, the mobile app which can live stream directly in HD from any android phone to YouTube has raised angel funding from six angel investors. A total of about Rs. 75 lakhs (120,000$) funding has been raised from Rajan Anandan - MD, Google India; Amit Ranjan - CoFounder, Slideshare; Rajesh Sawhney - Founder, GSF; Niraj Singh of Outbox Ventures; AECAL - German investor and MeraEvents.
Co-founded by IIT Roorkee graduate Karthik Vaidyanathan and Prakhar Khanduja, Instalively will be launching its android app which was running in private beta for three months, by the end of this week.
The end-to-end live streaming solution is available both on mobile and the desktop. InstaLively helps broadcast videos to the cloud in just a single click. The technology is such that using the InstaLively mobile app, one can LiveStream to Youtube directly from an android phone with a single click. Moreover, InstaLively has also built desktop apps (Windows & Mac) to liveStream from a professional camera.
Rajesh Sawhney said that InstaLively is bringing together the video delivery capabilities of YouTube with the real time reach of Social Media.
The team and the technology
The 12 member team at InstaLively has eight people working on product and the rest on marketing and sales. Karthik says,
What we have built is not an easily replicable technology. We'll be focusing a lot towards marketing (and sales)now. One of the inherent challenges of any technology is educating the market about it.
Our technology is way superior to livestreaming apps like Meerkat, Stre.am or any other app doing the rounds lately. Cross-platform low bandwidth video delivery is important in Asian market and closely integrating with Youtube, InstaLively facilitates it way better than any other LiveStreaming solution in the market today.
The main USP of InstaLively is that it integrates seamlessly into one's Youtube Channel and has two livestreaming modes – “Do-it-Yourself" OR "Get External Help". In the latter, the nearest videographer comes to your location on the click of a button to livestream/ record the event into your Youtube channel.
Business model and funds deployment
InstaLively has B2B and B2C solutions. While the former is paid, the latter(the android app for users) will remain free as of now. This strategy aims at making users aware about the app and get them on platform.
In the past two months, they have successfully piloted with 30-40 marquee clients (of the likes of Google, Mary Kom, NASSCOM for Startups, NrityaBharati, GSF, Meraevents, Belgian Embassy, amongst others). The fresh funds will be used to target the global livestreaming market which includes events ranging from entertainment to corporate to personal events (like birthday parties, weddings).
Karthik says,
We have a stable product team and do not plans to hire aggressively at the moment. With the current round of funding, the emphasis will be on getting customers as we haven’t gone to the market yet and being a completely new concept, it's even more uphill task.
