India’s first curated video platform that helps users create their Personal Video Magazine
11th July, 2017, Mumbai: Indian cricketing legend and former captain Sourav Ganguly has made his very first foray in the startup world by investing in Mumbai based entertainment company, Flickstree.
Flickstree is a tech-entertainment company, started by Mr. Saurabh Singh, Mr. Rahul Jain and Mr. Nagender Sangra in 2014, officially launching their platform in August 2016.
Flickstree is India’s first Personal Video Magazine. It is a curated and personalized Video Platform, for free-to-watch videos. Flickstree compiles these free-to-watch online videos from social networks, media sites, and blogs and then creates a custom user video feed. The AI based on patent pending technology, allows Flickstree to effectively curate and personalize the experience for its users.
“Digital is the future of India across all fields. And going by the country’s Digital India vision, I decided to invest in Flickstree because they’re at the forefront of innovative cutting edge technology and have great founders to realize their vision”, said Sourav Ganguly. He also said, “Different users have different passions. Flickstree helps users follow their passion and create their personal video magazine. Such a model has the potential to change the way videos are consumed.”
Flickstree has bucketed 20+ video categories that users can currently follow, and they are constantly adding more categories on the platform. Ganguly continued, “Users today have interests in various fields. While currently users can create only a single video magazine on Flickstree based on their interests, going forward I have asked the founders to enable users create multiple such magazines that users can create and enjoy.”
Saurabh Singh, CEO, Flickstree said, “We are delighted to have Sourav Ganguly on-board as a partner, investor and a catalyst who really believes in our idea”. He also said, “India is witnessing video boom and with the launch of 4G, suddenly it has exploded further. With so many content producers creating quality content, it becomes difficult for users to discover videos across multiple platforms. Flickstree is trying to organize video content from the free web for users.”
Flickstree has raised a seed round INR 3Cr capital from investors like Venture Catalysts, Anirban Aditya & Ankit Aditya (Aditya Group, Kolkata) and Moksh Sports Ventures, along with Sourav Ganguly. Venture Catalysts is leading the round.
“The free-to-watch video space is extremely fragmented, with multiple players creating tons of video content. These videos are published exclusively on separate platforms – a user who has interest in several categories cannot install multiple apps and keep browsing them separately, also owing to limited phone storage. This leads to poor video discovery. Flickstree is trying to solve this consumer problem”, said Mr. Satadru Dutta, co-founder Moksh Sports Ventures and Business Development Consultant to Flickstree, who was instrumental in bringing Sourav Ganguly and Aditya Group on board. “Dada has always backed youngsters and accepted new challenges”, concluded Satadru Dutta.
Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder and President Venture Catalysts, said, “Flickstree’s core technology is an AI powered video recognition technology that watches videos in-screen like human beings. The patent pending technology generates keywords for each video and gathers video popularity, sentiment and engagements on Internet. This helps the company get best videos from multiple platforms. It also helps them personalize these videos for users.”
Flickstree is also a Facebook backed company via their FBStart program. Currently with 20+ video categories, users can follow & create an interesting video magazine on Flickstree.
“Video Industry is booming and will only explode further. A player like Flickstree can potentially change the way videos are consumed by users all over the world”, says Anirban Aditya, Chairman Aditya Group.
“There is something for every user type, with carefully chosen video categories on Flickstree. Everyone should give it a try”, says Sourav Ganguly.
The Team
The co-founding team comprises of 3 co-founders:
Saurabh Singh, CEO: He is the product champion, with 11 years of experience at Asian Paints Ltd, India’s largest Paint manufacturing company. He headed “New Products” division at Asian Paints and to his credit has launched and seeded multiple successful product and services.
Nagender Sangra, CTO: He is the Machine Learning expert. He has coded multiple complex softwares, including AI enabled ForEx Terminals, Business Alerts and Spam Terminators, among others.
Rahul Jain, COO: Rahul is a digital and media expert with 8 years of experience, who has also headed Asian Paints Media team for 3 years. Under him, the company won multiple awards in digital and mainstream media.