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Editing videos can be a tedious and time-consuming task, taking video editors hours and days to get their footage ready for release. Moreover, hiring a team of video editors is not what every content creator or small company wants to invest in. This is where vidyo.ai comes into the picture.
Launched two years ago by Vedant Maheshwari and Kushagra Pandya, the platform has experienced remarkable growth, scaling from zero to approximately 300,000 monthly active users, and achieved a revenue milestone of $2 million. Notably, a significant portion of vidyo.ai’s revenue, about 85%, comes from the US market.
Most recently, the company was part of the Google for Startups Accelerator programme. The company hasn’t raised any funding since its seed round of $1.1 million in 2022.
The team has made significant strides in addressing one of the industry’s most persistent challenges: video editing.
Maheshwari and vidyo.ai’s journey into the realm of video content and social media began over eight years ago, during which he collaborated with creators and influencers to refine their content strategies across platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
It was during this period that Maheshwari identified a major pain point: the time-consuming and complex nature of video editing.
This insight led to the creation of vidyo.ai, a platform designed to streamline the video editing process. The vision was to leverage AI to handle 80-90% of the editing, leaving users with the flexibility to make final adjustments before sharing their content on social media.
The platform caters to a diverse user base, including content creators, podcasters, and businesses seeking to generate short-form content with minimal effort. “We essentially enable them to let the AI edit their videos, and then they can publish directly to all social media platforms using our software,” Maheshwari added.
How vidyo.ai Works
vidyo.ai combines OpenAI’s models with proprietary algorithms to transform raw video footage into polished content. Users upload their videos to the platform, which then processes the content through a series of OpenAI prompts and proprietary data. This includes analysing what kind of videos perform well online, identifying potential hooks, and determining effective calls-to-action (CTAs).
“We run the video through multiple pipelines, identifying key hooks and combining them to create a final video. Our algorithms then score these videos based on their potential virality,” Maheshwari elaborated on the process. This “virality score” is derived from a dataset of 100,000 social media videos, allowing the platform to suggest the most promising clips for engagement.
When compared to other video editing tools like GoPro’s QuikApp and Magisto, vidyo.ai distinguishes itself with its frame-by-frame analysis of both video and audio content. Unlike these platforms, which often edit videos based on mood or music, vidyo.ai dives deeper into the content to optimise for social media performance.
“We do a comprehensive analysis of the content, ensuring that every aspect is optimised for virality,” Maheshwari said. This level of detail, combined with the ability to publish directly across multiple platforms, provides users with a unique advantage.
Challenges and Opportunities
Despite its success, vidyo.ai faces challenges common to Indian startups, particularly in securing funding. Maheshwari noted that while Indian VCs are cautious about investing in AI, preferring application-layer solutions over foundational work, US VCs often have a more aggressive approach.
“We’ve gone from zero to $2Mn in ARR in less than two years, which is remarkable. However, raising subsequent rounds of funding in India remains challenging due to a lack of clarity on how AI investments will pay off,” Maheshwari explained, saying that the VCs of the US would be ready to invest looking at this metric alone.
He also reflected on the possibility of starting the company in the US instead of India, citing potential benefits in terms of ease of operations and investor interest. “It often feels like running a company in India comes with more challenges compared to the US,” he admitted.
When it comes to finding the moat, vidyo.ai still stands on the tough ground of maybe Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok releasing a similar feature on the base app. “There is definitely a little bit of platform risk,” but Maheshwari explained that it is unlikely that customers would shift to that since they don’t want to restrict themselves to the workflow of a creation platform.
Comparing it to building something like Canva, Maheshwari said that vidyo.ai plans to expand its offerings, including the potential integration of generative AI features like deep-fakes and avatars. Currently, the team is also working on building an AI-based social media calendar, which would suggest to users content that would work the best in the coming week.
Maheshwari envisions building a comprehensive suite of tools for social media creation and publishing. “Our goal is to develop a full-stack solution that encompasses every aspect of social media content creation,” he said.
