Interview with Founder & CEO of Mogi IO Mr. Vikrant Khanna
Please introduce about your company & products
Mogi is a B2B SaaS venture in the Media Tech space that leverages Artificial intelligence (AI) in building cutting-edge IPs to disrupt the Video streaming space in the media tech domain. Mogi has
built various products catering to different industries.
Mogi’s solution comprises 3 buckets
- Video Tech (Videu)
The tech stack enables end to end delivery for Video on Demand (VoD) & Live streaming backed by IPs that include Mogi’s patent pending Streaming Engine which leverages a multi CDN architecture to deliver buffer free videos & AI based quality enhancement & transcoding (delivering 50% superior compression Vs conventional solutions like AWS media convert)
- Image Tech (Photu)
Transforms & compresses images by up to 80% for websites & apps to enhance their user experience
- White Label solution (MOTT)
This enables content owners & creators to launch their own OTT / video app in days & start monetizing their content.
Thus, Mogi’s disruptive pricing model does not involve any capex as It is based on the subscription model pricing based purely on usage
Describe your professional journey
The company is headed by Vikrant Khanna and Rahul Lahoria. Vikrant holds vast experience for working with major brands around the industry and is a seasoned P&L leader with 20+ years of experience across e com, Telecom & CPG categories. Moving to his corporate career, Vikrant last headed operations as the COO of Homeshop18 (Network18). Prior to this, he was the VP of Bharti Airtel’s Digital platforms across their three lines of business (Mobility, Broadband, and DTH). Being the marketing maverick that he is, his earlier days around the industry marked Vikrant’s success via his collaboration in brand launches such as Vatika Shampoo for Dabur and the Pillsbury brand for General Mills in India.
Mr. Rahul Lahoria, the Co-Founder & CTO who has filed for six patents. With over eight years of experience, he has been a software development engineer and been part of leadership teams of various companies and led them to develop technologies to reduce their cost of operations.He has co-founded three start-ups prior to Mogi.
Together they have a total industry experience of 30 years plus and a total entrepreneurial experience of 10 years plus in various industries.
What were the challenges you faced while building your start-up?
The most crucial challenge for any start-up is acquiring customers and providing them the belief in our product. We overcame this by constantly speaking to customers and refining & iterating our product based on their feedback till we reached a point where we felt we hv achieved a reasonable product market fit.
What was the eureka moment when you thought of launching your own start-up
It all started when we were trying to figure out a way in developing a short format video app. The primary aim was to develop a short form video application where content consumers could strike a friendship with content creators by sending them a small ticket value virtual gift such as Rs 5 cup cake or a Rs 10 rose, which could then be encased by the creator via paytm while the gifted could chat with the content creator as a gratification.
This is where the eureka moment happened as we realized a typical content platform has to undergo many tech challenges and complexities. The user was facing issues of buffering, poor video quality, and jerkiness.
We then decided to enhance our streaming services but failed to find the optimal market solutions. This proved to be the turning point as we decided to develop our own solution to address these problems. Over time, our exemplary results encouraged us to file for the patent for the new technologies in 2019.
Tell us how Technology in OTT space has grown
We’ve come a long way from flipping channels on our television sets to surfing OTT platforms for new content. The shift was indeed major. However, if you look at the previous decade, it was still an era primarily focused on television shows and TRPs. However, with OTT technology on the rise, things are quite different now!
Tech tie-ups with OTT platforms are enabling high-quality products and customer-centric features. Further, with the concept of AI now introduced to the mix, things are only going to get better!
With increasing video penetration and video streaming, Mogi seems to have tapped into the right market. Their proprietary technologies can help every content company to provide a seamless video streaming experience on their platform.
Any advice for entrepreneurs
India is a land of innovation and the future belongs to those who want to add value to it. No matter the tech, industry, or field you’re dealing with, if you’re an entrepreneur cum investor for the future of the country, ensure that you work on simplifying the complexities around operations. There’s a lot that can be better, all the best!
