Thursday, 2 November 2006

India's YouTube, Meravideo.com, Snags USD 1.5 Mln VC Funding

An Indian YouTube clone, Meravideo.com, is close to getting USD 1.5 million Venture Capital (VC) funding. The man behind the video site, Kanwaldeep S Kalsi, Head, Braingain Entertainment, said, "The money, which is for an initial period of eight-nine months, will be spent on infrastructure, bandwidth scalability, manpower and public relations and marketing of the site." He would not divulge more details.

The key is user-created content. This is at the center of YouTube’s strategy which generates about 100 million page views a day (more than the NBC network). Kalsi plans to do likewise. At MeraVideo, "the video creator earns money by simply sharing it with friends, family and the world", explains Kalsi.

How will he make money, though? "Will this imported concept work in India? wonders Avnish Bajaj, founding MD of Matrix Partners Investment Fund. "Internet users in India spend a fraction of the time compared to the US counterparts where such models are successful. The Indian psyche is different. Hence there’s no viral effect and these sites are difficult to monetise in India."

Kalsi thinks otherwise. He believes people will use MeraVideo since the advertisers’ money is split equally between the video’s author and MeraVideo. Advertisers can track and achieve a return while using the ‘pay per click’ model. Revenue is also generated from downloading and sharing of videos onto mobiles, sale of content, sale of DVDs and VCDs of these videos, sale of video clippings to other content providers and banner advertisements. Kalsi also claims he has tied-up with big studios for content.