It was early 2007. Then, Hulu was Chinese for ‘gourd’ and Netflix just a DVD distribution company.
Running a digital media company for a greater part of a decade, and managing sites like MSN India, had provided me a fairly good insight into how things were evolving in the digital media space in India. I was reasonably sure that videos were going to be the next big thing and started fashioning a brand that could capture the essence of what I was chasing. And, `iStream’ was born out of a desire to build a `cool’ consumer media brand.
I shared my thoughts with Dhanu (C.Dhanukodi). I really wasn’t sure whether the idea was exciting enough to uproot him from the comforts of the Bay Area in the US. But there he was, making half a dozen trips to India in as many months and we got things moving. We also decided to tap into one of the shrewdest and incisive minds in the internet space George Zacharias, the then MD of Yahoo! India. I remember, it was George’s last day in office at Yahoo!. Couple of breakfast meetings followed and George was on board, sharing our vision.
The journey was beginning take-off in real earnest. Dhanu, by then, had shifted base to India.
In MSN, we had a partner who was willing to bet on videos and we began by serving them – our own content. And we did innovate. Even sitting, in one instance, with the executive chefs of Bangalore’s 5-star hotels, who unraveled for us the hallowed secrets of making exotic cocktails and recipes. However, we soon realized that making our own content was not an inexpensive proposition. We needed to build an ecosystem, bringing TV channels on board. Many of them were sitting on a pile of archived content; but barely had an online presence. After many months of selling the concept, and with some gentle persuasion, some big broadcasters signed up. By then we had also signed up with the biggest video platform of all -YouTube. We bet on genres like news and regional content, on a platform which was hitherto gung-ho only on cricket and Bollywood. The gamble paid off! In a relatively short time, iStream was among the largest partners for YouTube in India aggregating close to a billion video views! But was that all we set out to do? Sure, we were making money. But the idea was to be a much more than just being a services company serving third-party platforms.
By now, Hulu had grown into a household name in the US. Netflix had transformed the benchmarks for the industry with a device-centric approach. They were multi-billion dollar brands by then. We could see that others were living our dream. Time to start chasing the dream; in a more concerted, innovative fashion, we decided. We began to tread a new path – of becoming a digital media company rooted in technology; building a world class product. To build an online destination for videos that could serve millions of Indians worldwide. Of course, it was not easy. Among other things, it involved a lot of moolah.
Fortunately for us, we found someone who shared our dreams, even prompting us to dream bigger; and were willing to bet on us. The brief we kept for ourselves was simple – build a great team that could deliver a really cool product.
Today we have a made a small step towards that. Thanks to my ‘dream team’, istream.com is a reality. We have built this with a lot of passion. We do hope that you like what we serve. We are betting on `News’ as the first big thing. We will bring breaking news closer to you and that too, in more than eight Indian languages. I promise this is just the beginning. We will have more such exciting stuff, including movies and TV shows which will be soon be streamed to your devices. Unlike our bigger US-cousins, we are serving an audience that speaks many languages. Does that make our job more challenging? Yes, very much. Does that make it more exciting? An even bigger yes. But, we look forward to the challenge and the excitement.
So, here’s to exciting iStreaming times ahead.
Cheers,
Radhakrishnan Ramachandran,
Founder & CEO
iStream.com
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Sounds pretty exciting!
From what I understood by browsing iStream, I have some feedback and questions…..
1. The concept of LIVE TV is awesome. But given the bandwidths in a country like India, you need to check your bitrates! (Its struggling to stream on a 768Kbps link)
2. Are you using any shot-boundary detection algorithms to segment videos or just going by meta data ?
3. I see FB social plugins being used. Is this a deliberate choice? Do you want to solely rely on a third party application for user comments? Especially given that you are planning to make it the best one, I think you should allow only registered users to comment on an object of interest (you are providing a “quick sign up” .option. So, registration should not be a problem I guess)
I believe that would really come in handy for meta-data in the future, may be for recommendations!.
4. YOU MUST HAVE A SEARCH BOX in the home page!
5. Do you have your own code to stream ? Node.js sounds promising for web servers with real-time interactions. Please have a look at it if you haven’t already!
6. I think you already would be focusing on caching the near-static pages! Are you running a cron to update the site after fixed intervals or a manual update? (This am specifically asking because machine might find it difficult to decide “top 6″ news stories).
7. Where is the RSS on home page?
8. Is it possible to know how video tagging(category) is done here?
I mean, manual category division for a new video or meta-data or some algorithm (say using acoustic, speech or image features. I remember coming across some research in that front for news videos in trecvid!)
I wish you guyz all the very best
. I have asked a few questions only out of curiosity to know how iStream works. I hope you take the feedback in a positive way.
P.S: Such a lengthy comment, because I have a feeling that iStream will make it big and you won’t be answering my questions nor taking my feedback then
.
Hey Pavan,
Thanks for taking the time to check out iStream. As for your questions, let me try and answer them for you.
Regarding bandwidth, were you getting effective BW of 768kbps? We are using the world’s biggest platform for streaming, and our streams play even at 300kbps without buffering, in all continents except Antarctica.
Search will be implemented, 100% in agreement with you. We will notify our subscribers as soon as its ready.
Node.js, its already there as required
Our site pages are fully dynamic, and it gets updated as soon as content is added at the backend, which happens All-The-Time.
We believe RSS is outdated. Twitter is the new feed
If you’re on twitter, do follow us: http://www.twitter.com/iStreamVideo
Cheers!! And Keep iStreaming!!
Great! thanks for the share!
Thanks for your time and for checking us out!
Dear Radha,
Congratulations to you, Dhanu and George on the successful fund raise. The growth of istream over the years has been great to witness!
The very nature of entrepreneurship is to be ahead of time and that’s what you were in 2007. Hopefully the time has come for istream. Here’s wishing you all the very best!
Best, Vijay
Where exactly is the facebook like link ?
The concept of LIVE TV is awesome and buffering is also good, i expect from you content of some telugu entertainment channels like telugu serials, cooking recipies and heal advises………
one more my important advise is ” Flash news of stack exchanges”
anyhow thanks for sharing and All the Best…….
Hey Mansur,
Thanks for checking us out
We’re working on getting you some Telugu entertainment content, very soon we’ll have it up and running.
And as for business/stock market, check out ET NOW here
Keep iStreaming!
Good work guys@iStream!!
I’ve been into video domain for quite sometime now, and built lot of technologies, or consulted companies building good technologies around video. But the key problem is – “Monetization” i.e. making money out of video services. And this problem multiplies, when “it’s targeted as mobile video” and gets worse if targeted for Indian customers.
If service is on broadband, then youTube is all I need and now content owners are happy sharing content on YouTube, and they are happy even if somebody else share their content on YouTube, because now YouTube does finger-printing and share ad-revenue with content owner. And do not forget, content owners are coming up with their own apps etc. So monetizing video on broadband if it’s not like Netflix or Hulu is difficult, infact, I see them (Netflix/Hulu) struggling in coming time, hence they are racing ahead each other to get some exclusive content rights. But they would be hit hard when TWC or Comcast etc extend their offerings to IP connected devices too.
Don’t forget, what is happening with Apalya in India, even when there offering is served as white-listed services, where consumer doesn’t have to pay for data, and pay only Rs. 2 for 1 min of video, the service didn’t take off, and Apalya is bleeding. Apalya founders are my friend, and I still wish them luck.
Good luck to iStream folks too.
I too want to see mobile video/streaming video a success, commercially too. and will continue to build innovative solutions to make it happen, and I’m working on some of them right now.
Cheers!!!
Now coming back to Mobile Video, in tiered pricing model (which is becoming global phenomenon now), the cost of watching such video is too high, really high for average people. There is a need of fundamental shift. for example in India, if I watch youtube, I pay huge data charge to watch it. Hence, mobile video take-off is waiting for some sort of subsidy. And only advertisers can subsidize that – like sponsorship model. They way it started happening for Wifi-access in USA. And then only it make sense for advertisers too, as they love property with end-users. But if without subsidy advertisers are with OTT (over the top) players guys, then subscribers suffers further, as now they are paying data charge for viewing ads too, as in mobile video, ads are generally pre-post roll. Or OTT starts paying operators, helping it subsidize the traffic cost. Else, entertainment would remain in-door (meaning on Wifi) and OTT will make peanuts, and that too through advertisers only.
Greetings! Quick question that’s entirely off topic. Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly? My web site looks weird when viewing from my iphone. I’m trying to find a theme or plugin that might be able to correct this issue. If you have any recommendations, please share. With thanks!
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Hey Rodriguez, thanks a lot for checking our site out. As for your question, there are many tutorials online that would help you in making your site mobile-friendly.
I found one, hope this helps!
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Glad you liked what you read!
For all the News, Live and on-demand, head over to http://www.istream.com
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