Posted by Mumbai: Toch.ai – an Indian startup’s AI-backed technology is helping many of the television broadcasters covering the Tokyo Olympics 2020. Broadcasters from 14 different countries have partnered with Tochi.ai for leveraging its technology.
For most tv broadcasters, one of the biggest challenges is to live telecast the visuals to viewers globally but without missing out on any key moments. And Toch.ai’s AI-backed video editing platform is helping many of these broadcasters to over those challenges.
Besides, the AI-backed technology enables them to increase their efficiency, capabilities and enhance the live coverage of the Tokyo Olympics from Japan starting today.
AI, Video Content Editing and Broadcasters
Toch.ai is an AI-driven SaaS platform that uses cloud-agnostic and deep learning algorithms for the automatic interpretation of content featured in videos.
The Mumbai based tech startup is an AI-backed video content editing platform that allows automatic meta-tagging of data, identification of key moments, and video content processing.
“Our proprietary technology solves problems effectively through a cloud agnostic API implementation of AI saving 80% of manual video editing costs, 60% of manual time, and mitigating risks for our customers and partners,” says Vinayak Shrivastav, Co-Founder and CEO – Toch.ai.
“Toch.ai’s expertise in deep tech, AI, and machine learning, has helped broadcaster and media companies achieve agility, automation, and enhanced user experience 15X faster with a 4.2X higher engagement rate all in real-time,” adds Shrivastav.
For the Tokyo Olympics, some 18 tv broadcasters across 14 different countries that include India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Germany, Hongkong, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand have partnered with Toch.ai. They are leveraging Toch’s video content platform during the live coverage from Tokyo to those respective countries.
Some of Toch’s video content platform features include Bite-sized videos — for building smart bite-sized content, highlights, and teasers. Toch Amplify — for adding graphical overlays, insert slates and brand the content in real-time. And, Toch Engage — for publishing content across platforms and devices seamlessly and simultaneously.
“We are continuously growing and adding new technologies to our engines in order to make a platform that integrates all aspects of this ever-evolving dynamic industry and to provide the best that the market has to offer,” informs Shrivastav.
The Startup Journey So Far
Shrivastav along with Saket Dandotia and Alok Patil co-founded the startup Toch in 2016. Initially, Toch.ai had started with content moderation and gradually it expanded into video content by developing AI-backed capabilities such as metadata detection, highlight tools, key moments capture and more.
During the past four years, the tech startup has built 30 different event modules that cater to various segments within the media industry such as news, sports, branded video content, entertainment and OTT platforms. These pre-defined modules help in reducing time for video editing and processing with automation leveraging AI-based algorithms.
Toch’s Technology, Sporting Events And Customers
Overall, those modules help broadcasters and media companies to be more efficient and reduces the turnaround time in case of live events such as the Tokyo Olympics. However, this isn’t the first time Toch’s technology solutions are being leveraged in a mega sporting event.
In past, the startup’s technology solutions were used during the coverage of other sports events such as the football tourneys namely COPA America, Bundesliga and Premier League, and the car racing event Formula1.
“Our customers include SonyLIV, Disney Hotstar, Zee5 and SkySport amongst others who validate our technology through usage and adoption,” shares Shrivastav.
Noticeable Growth And Future Prospects
Toch in the past four years has increased its strength to 62 people, among which 36 work on technology and engineering, and the rest are involved in other business functions.
The tech startup has achieved noticeable growth so far. “We have grown at a compounding annual growth rate of 300% with a customer base of 200+ clients spread across geographies,” says Shrivastav.
Further, “Our focus is to target specific industries of sports, entertainment and news. We are expanding geographically with a clear focus on the European and North American continents,” he adds.
The addressable global video editing software market size is expected to reach 1.1 billion by 2025 as per industry estimates. The market is growing at a CAGR of 4.4% during the forecast period across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America, Middle East and Africa.
However, the market segment in which Toch.ai operates is much bigger with a faster growth rate. The global video AI market is growing at a fast pace and is expected to be around $169.4 billion by 2025.
“Innovations, such as AI and machine learning in video tech that helps in improving the video quality are expected to boost the market growth. The demand for AI based video editing software is driven by the increasing need for easy-to-use editing solutions that are also cost-effective,” Shrivastav explains why the video AI market is growing faster.
Nevertheless, Shrivastav concludes the role of AI is not to reduce manpower or jobs but to improve efficiency and automate time-consuming, cumbersome manual processes involved in video editing.