Kanwaldeep of BrainGain Media emailed me to inform me about MeraVideo. Mera Video is a self confessed YouTube clone as of now. The site has very similar features with the main difference being that the content is targeted towards an Indian audience. I had two obvious questions for Kanwaldeep:
1. What are your plans in terms of scalability? YouTube was burning more than a million dollars a month on bandwidth costs. How do you plan to monetize the website to keep it sustainable? Are you raising money for the same?
Kanwaldeep:
MeraVideo can be termed âas of nowâ the Desi version of YouTube but has been designed to eventually generate monies thru various unexplored revenue streams. Some of the revenue streams include: Syndication of Content, A Television show called âIndiaâs Amazing/Funny Videosâ and selling of premium accounts for users with high bandwidth usage requirements. The eventual goal is to be a âMedia Content Aggregatorâ for India. The main source of revenue âat this point of timeâ is âConfidentialâ and we plan to unleash it with the rollout of our Beta Version slated to be sometime end of this year. I am not in a position to share the âmain revenueâ or monetization source at this point of time due to its confidentiality.
I agree, the main barrier to entry when it comes to scalability is âthe high bandwidth requirementsâ for running a video sharing site. To address the same, MeraVideo is raising its first round of funding. A lot of angels as well as early stage VC funds have expressed interest in this venture. We expect to close the first round in the next 20 days. The first round of funding is intended to address the following: Infrastructure, Scalability and Manpower, PR.
2. What is your stance on copyright material? I see lot of copyright material on your site. How do you plan to deal with that issue?
Kanwaldeep:
The real truth is that due to the sensitive nature of the subject it is very difficult to prevent any violation infringements with regards to the âintrusion of private spaceâ. The other violation i.e. reuse of components such as Music, Clips etc. can be easily monitored using a skilled set of researchers who screen the videos manually. Apart from this we will always have the standard âTerms of Useâ and the âPrivacy Agreementâ as our first defense mechanism. We screen every video that is uploaded on our site. We have taken permissions from respective producers and studios for most of the copyrighted stuff that you can see on our website i.e. movie promos etc. To further this, we are finalizing contracts with Sahara Motion pictures and UTV to allow MeraVideo to showcase their films/promos as well as movies. Being a part of the Producers Guild in Mumbai, we actually are very particular about copyrights infringement. That is probably the reason why you do not see any clips from Indian TV shows (like the laughter challenge) etc.
My Take
In general I am skeptical about clones of any sort. I think MeraVideo or any India targeted video portal will have to innovate locally in some aspects. My guess is that mobile integration could be the killer feature for the desi audience. The fact that MeraVideo has tie ups with big media houses is definitely a big plus in their favor. At the same time, the popularity of YouTube was to a large extent due to the availability of copyright TV content there. It would be interesting to see how VCs react to Video sharing sites post-YouTube acquisition. This is one space where you can not survive long without VC money! All the best to MeraVideo!
It would interesting so see original amateur content from India on this site as amateur content is quite big on youtube and one of the main attractions. But, i doubt a indian youtube would work in the long run.
Indian youtube huh! well i guess they can succeed given that they can handle their growth well in terms of infra structure. But if it does become popular and they don't do partnership deals with indian content providers(TV channels) we might end up seeing some legal hassles. BTW youtube like totally rocks. ROCKS.
Personally I don't think that an Indian Version of YouTube has much scope, as Indians aren't as fond of making home videos as the americans.Anyways from the kind of videos that are currently posted ,they are available at most P2P sites and Indian forums, and also keep doing the rounds in Company Circles and Emails,I for one have seen most of the videos currently posted.
Talking about Video Sharing the next hot thing is gonna be Video Sharing in 3G Mobile Networks,where 2 or more people can share a video during a regular voice conversation
thanks bhai
Gaurav, you may want to check out this post
http://mashable.com/2006/11/02/indian-youtube-doesnt-deserve-15-million/
Considering the level of Internet and broadband penetration, I do not think India is ready for a video site yet. More on this at:
http://ileher.com/2006/11/12/15-million-funding-for-meravideo-joke-or-sign-of-boom/
meravideo looks interesting. i came across a similar site called www.connectfilms.com . interesting thing about www.connectfilms.com is that it caters for both desi and international users. i heard it is backed by a famous UK media company.
Bobby, Nasik
www.connectfilms.com looks interesting. The founder of connectfilms.com Mansoor Ahamed who is based in London U.K. claims it is one of the few sites in its class which connects Bollywood to Hollywood. He claims connectfilms.com is coming up with interesting competitions soon to give variety to its users. He said that www.connectfilms.com would like to focus on niche market as oppose to www.youtube.com . He declined to comment more on competitions. It will be interesting to watch what kind of new features connectfilms.com can bring into the market.
There is a new one called bhidu.tv promoted by Bollywood star Jackie Shroff for exclusive Indian content.
hi there is one more simmillar site which looks very fast, more colourful and lot of indian cultural videos i liked this site just try this out
www.canaravideo.com
Hi,
Thats a nice site. But have found a better desi video sharing site it has a large desi video songs collection, lyrics most important is it has no popup ads. Check this out http://www.bollywoodtube.com
Rajiv
Here is another site which is similar to meravideo.....Looks like many people
are jumping onto video website ship.....
www.layfile.com
you should also see http://videochutney.com content owners can get lots of revenue from video downlaods on cellphones.
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