Scale, Scale, & Scale Further To Succeed Is Biggest Lesson We’ve Learned Over The Years In Industry: Vinayak Shrivastav, Co-Founder and CEO, Toch

Brief us about your business model. How did the idea of starting Toch come up and how does it work?

The idea of Toch began as a simple one of bridging the glaring gap between content and commerce. Once we began improvising and building the idea step by step, we found an increased number of use cases surrounding the extensive usage of metadata. That’s how we began transforming Toch into a full-fledged media-tech platform.

At present, the platform works on simple API integrations and allows videos to be analyzed directly by uploading URLs onto the dashboard. To put it in perspective, Toch runs various custom modules. We need to analyze each frame and extract data that translates to metadata. We then use it for automated key moments, highlights, or dynamic ad placements. While the basic idea of blending content and commerce remains the same, we are continuously innovating and reinventing to ensure enhanced services and best-in-class experience for viewers/shoppers.

What are the unique points of your company?

Toch is an entirely cloud-based platform. In a world where cybersecurity breaches are increasing rapidly, Toch strives to safeguard the content rights of media platforms at all times. Driven by proprietary AI and Blockchain technologies, our platform protects user rights and offers a frictionless end-to-end experience. Toch is a first-of-its-kind video AI platform and facilitates automatic dynamic ad insertions.

How are you different from existing competitors?

What sets us apart is that we are a cloud-agnostic platform with the ability to process protected content without actually needing the video file that is sent to us.

What is the funding status and the monetization model?

We consider ourselves lucky to be backed by marquee investors in the country. We are in the process of planning our Series A funding round soon. Our monetization model is fairly straightforward, and we charge per minute of content. Simply put, we utilize the pay as you use concept, so media platforms don’t need to pay any additional charges.

What are the challenges you face in running the business?

When it comes to the Indian market, there were significant challenges in building a SaaS business. However, we have built a product that is carefully designed to suit the requirements of Indian companies and is noticed globally. This contributes to a large extent in helping us accelerate business and progress quickly.

How has the response been so far?

The response from our clients has been incredible and they find us to be a unique platform. They also understand the ROI that comes attached with our services. They’ve found Toch to be an innovative model that combines the best of both content and commerce. Positive client feedback drives us to innovate and evolve further to enhance our services. 

How do you look at expansion?

We have noted that the international market is warming up quite well and we are planning to expand our footprint to countries outside India soon. Over the next 3 years, our goal is to establish our presence in 4 different continents with a notable market share in the key target countries.

What are your marketing plans?

We are currently planning to ramp up our marketing efforts and aggressively engage in marketing to dominate a few domains. 

What has been the biggest learning so far?

We have learned that expanding your business and consistently scaling up operations are the keys to success. Scale, scale, and scale further to succeed is the biggest lesson we’ve learned over the years in the industry.

What is the market size and opportunity?

The industry size on a global scale is over USD 4 billion at the moment and is rapidly increasing. With rising demand from customers, the sector is growing at a CAGR of 34%.