The future of TV: Cloud-based broadcasting

Livemint.com reports that there are several advantages of cloud-based services—notably, since the service is software-based, one doesn’t need a physical location to run the operations.

Amagi Media Labs founders Baskar Subramanian, Srinivasan K. A. and Srividhya S.—the three engineer-entrepreneurs—have yet to find time to celebrate the new investment in their media tech firm. On 15 December, Emerald Media—the pan-Asian platform established by global investment firm KKR & Co. for investing in the media and entertainment sector—announced that the company was acquiring a significant minority stake in Amagi, which works in the space of targeted television advertising and cloud-based TV broadcast infrastructure. Premji Invest, the investment arm of Azim Premji (an existing shareholder), also participated in this combination of primary and secondary $35 million Series D round. (Mayfield India and Nadathur Holdings continue to remain invested in the company.)

What attracted Emerald Media to Amagi was primarily its cloud-based broadcasting technology that the KKR company’s managing director Rajesh Kamat thinks is “transformational”.

According to Subramanian, cloud-based services virtualize the whole broadcasting operation. Currently, the company is delivering channels in 25 countries through such a platform. For instance, the Bollywood film and music channel B4U sits on an Amagi platform in London where its scheduling is done, while its content is pushed from Mumbai. The channel beams into India, the UK, Canada and Singapore even as it is monitored in Bengaluru.

Read more at http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/4Vsw2jkp8rWDRBxUra3lxO/The-future-of-TV-Cloudbased-broadcasting.html