Startup Mantra: Upping brand watch potential the AI way

Pune: If it is free, you are the product” goes the popular adage. On the one hand, we continue to consume different kinds of content on several platforms, mostly free. On the other, monetising rich content is still a challenge for most of the brands as consumers find ways to avoid ads. Advertisers have long sought solutions for non-skippable ads like in-film product placement. However, with OTT (over-the-top) platforms and other independent content creators now dominating the entertainment industry space, advertisers are looking for a technology stack equipped platform to capture the attention of audience without being intrusive with ads.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing an important role to integrate brands and products into our favourite video content. Hence, in-video advertising and virtual product placement, powered by AI, have emerged as game changers in the marketing landscape, providing advertisers with innovative avenues to engage and captivate audience and an additional revenue opportunity for content producers, distributors and platforms. Anantadi, a Pune-based deep-tech startup founded by Tushar Patil, has developed such a platform which strategically places products within video content, tailored to the preferences of individual viewers and hence helping brands to effortlessly connect with their target markets in a non-intrusive, authentic manner.

Previously...

Hailing from Jalgaon, Tushar did his schooling from RR Vidyalaya and came to Pune for his BE mechanical from AISSMS College of Engineering. He completed his MBA marketing from Neville Wadia Institute of Management Studies and Research in 2011.

Tushar said, “After my MBA, I founded the ‘Roadside Entertainment’, a consulting company which dealt with product placement and brand partnerships. We created strategic partnerships between brands and TV, films, music, streaming, events, and celebrities. The concept was that when we watch a movie, a product placement pops off the screen and grabs our attention. We have worked with more than 100 films and 60 national and international brands with this concept. As a consulting company we were responsible for researching, identifying, and pitching branded content partnerships, establish and maintain relationships with production companies about placement opportunities and negotiate pricing, terms of contract, and other project-specific details with brands. We were also accountable for assigned campaigns, managing communication, and promotional co-ordination etc.”

“In the quest to offer something more to clients, I started researching on neuroscience, marketing, media research and behavioural science. I started another consultancy named ‘Neuro Inside Out’ in 2018 under which I consulted entertainment companies on researching and testing their media content based on neuromarketing. I also consulted an IT company for their media and UX (user experience) research lab for two years to build and develop their in-house AI ML-based (machine learning) software for EEG, facial expression analysis and eye tracking. The software is used for media and UX research, testing within their lab in India, South Africa, and the US. During pandemic I had to take break from ‘Roadside Entertainment’ as the services were focused on films,” Tushar said.

Backed with this experience, Tushar in 2020 experimented with another venture named “Dhiti” which was a design analysis SaaS platform backed by neuroscience and AI. He said, “Dhiti was an AI-powered design analysis tool that helps one to create smarter designs. It helped designers, brands, and businesses to make data-driven design decisions to boost ad effectiveness and user experience (UX).”

Anantadi

With the consultancy and SaaS platform experience, Tushar thought of developing a platform powered by AI which will help brands for in-video advertising and virtual product placement. Tushar said, “’Anantadi’ is a combination of two Sanskrit words ‘Anant’ and ‘Adi’. Anant means infinite and Adi means one or first one. We have envisioned Anantadi as the one platform with infinite possibilities and opportunities.”

“I had been doing primary research on companies involved in in-video advertising. I came across a few global companies which also had started recently and realised that globally this technology was picking up post-Covid. However, there was no serious contender from India. I knew that in-video advertising and virtual product placement was the next big thing in advertisement and with my supportive background, our ideation began around match-making in Indian-context. To validate my idea, I spoke to several industry experts from entertainment as well as software product industry. They also agreed that this idea is futuristic and it is a good time to start working on this technology as it may take few more years to be commercially successful,” Tushar said.

MVP

With idea validation in place, Tushar went for building the minimum viable product (MVP). “This was just for video analysis purpose and to give the user analysis and insights,” he said, adding, “While thinking about the problem statement in depth I realised there are three major stakeholders in the process. The advertisers, the consumers, and the content producers. For advertisers, ad avoidance is the biggest challenge and they are seeking new and creative ways to connect with audience. Consumers look at ads as an interruption and they will find every opportunity to skip, block or subscribe to avoid ads. Content producers are losing out on the monetisation opportunities in the traditional product placement business model. The traditional approach often requires complex upfront negotiations and there is limited window to close the deal.”

Explaining the basic application flow, Tushar said, “If we wish to place any product of a brand in a video then we should first be able to shortlist the scenes in the video. Just like we search text on any search engine like Google, we should be able to search for items that are displayed in the scenes. For example, if I search for an item like a table or chair, then all the scenes that contain visuals of a table or chair should be shortlisted. We should not be compelled to watch the videos repeatedly for finding relevant scenes that match our product. That was our minimum viable product or MVP stage to optimise by searching keywords and shortlisting relevant scenes from the video.”

Enterprise solution

While the MVP stage was successfully completed, Tushar wanted to develop an enterprise software-as-a-solution (SaaS) which essentially requires a technology full-stack.

Tushar said, “We want to develop Anantadi as an end-to-end in-video ad (virtual product placement) management platform backed by AI to analyse video, find relevant scenes, and insert branded products, and signage virtually into video content such as TV shows, movies, web series, music videos, and influencer content. As we have recently started building the platform, it has been scheduled with step-by-step feature wise release starting from September 2023.”

“In the product development stage, we have made significant progress towards bringing their virtual product placement solution to life. We are in the process of developing and testing their intelligent scene finder AI, which accurately identifies optimal moments for product integration within digital content. Additionally, our team has made substantial strides in building a robust ad inventory management system, providing clients with the tools to efficiently manage and track their virtual product placements. With a strong focus on programmatic virtual product placement, we are advancing towards creating an automated and data-driven platform that will revolutionise the way brands engage with their target audience,” Tushar said.

“To build this tech stack we needed developers. We have recently onboarded a techie experienced primarily in building and delivering digital solutions for web and native. A team of six members is working with him, while a separate research team on AI and ML has been constituted. We are also focussing on business development and marketing now and hiring new team members. Since, we needed funds for hiring skilled professionals, we started looking for seed-stage investors and applying for accelerator programmes too,” he said.

Investor experience

Anantadi was selected to the Avishkar Deep-Tech Accelerator programme of IIIT Hyderabad in September 2022. Tushar said, “The Avishkar accelerator programme provided us with a seed fund of ₹80 lakh. Of this, ₹10 lakh was given by IIIT Hyderabad, ₹30 lakh by a private equity firm SucSeed Indovation. The Samridh Yojana, startup accelerator of MeiTY, Government of India, has also agreed to invest an amount ( ₹40 lakh) equalling the total investment of IIIT Hyderabad and SucSeed Indovation under the Avishkar programme. We have completed the documentation and procedural part and waiting for the government funds to be realised. We are in discussion with other investors too. If we get good valuation, then we will raise another round of funding.”

“This early-stage capital was a significant boost for us. The funding will be instrumental in supporting our ongoing product development efforts and bringing our virtual product placement solution to market faster. Early institutional capital is a strong vote of confidence in our vision and potential, allowing us to continue building towards a successful launch and positioning ourselves as industry leaders in the virtual product placement space,” Tushar said.

Go-to-market strategy

Tushar said, “We are approaching major television companies, OTT platforms and independent content producers. Currently we are in discussion with about 15 such enterprises and piloting with three of them. The companies we are targeting are primarily those who have their own distribution channel, production, and intellectual property rights. In the next stage, we will be engaging with other stakeholders. We are also in discussion with some companies who are licencing content from various producers. We will be engaged in a revenue-sharing model with such companies, but we are first preferring companies with in-house production and distribution.”

Next move

On future opportunities, Tushar said, “The market is pointing towards a huge opportunity globally. India is going to be a major contributor considering the huge size of entertainment content produced and viewed every year. Our vision is to build a Google Ad Word for ‘In-Video’ advertisement and to become an AI-driven programmatic ad platform for on-demand and virtual product placement across the entire entertainment and video creator economy. We are looking forward to provide the most advanced and AI-based high-performing in-video advertising solution that is easy to integrate, deploy and scale and for this we will target in-influencer content, in–live sports, in-AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) Metaverse and in-video game platforms. One of the challenges with in-video advertisement is the context and creativity needs to be taken into consideration. Historical films or old content may not be a perfect fit for such advertisements. A brand may have different designs over years and hence the shortlisted scenes, its context, location, cultural sensitivity all needs to be considered and synchronised while placing the ad.”