Kaltura acquires Tvinci
May 2, 2014
In a move set to complete its transition from a largely VoD-focused company to one that has an equal emphasis on live/linear programming and an authenticated Pay OTT TV experience, open source video platform Kaltura has acquired Tvinci, the provider of Pay OTT TV services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Kaltura says the acquisition gives it a leadership position in the booming OTT market, and cements its role as the only pure-play video technology company to power any video experience across all markets (including Media and Entertainment, Enterprise, Education) and all channels (e.g. Multimedia Service Providers such as MVPDs, Telcos, MSPs, and Cloud Vendors).
Kaltura raised $47 million in venture capital in February and has experienced massive revenue and customer growth in the past year, as cited by leading analyst firms. According to Kaltura, the acquisition of Tvinci strengthens its pay-TV operator proposition and creates the world’s most comprehensive end-to-end Pay OTT TV offering.
Kaltura has already begun integrating Tvinci’s technology into its OTT MediaGo product. The integrated Kaltura-Tvinci platform enables operators and telcos, media companies, content owners and distributors to reach and monetise every user on every device. The platform supports live, on demand, and catchup services; SVOD, TVOD and ad-based monetization; social interaction and a personalized experience.
The integration of Tvinci’s technology into Kaltura’s platform also enhances Kaltura’s solutions for the Enterprise and Education markets, with advanced social and personalisation capabilities, and with tools for creating bundles and promotions.
Tvinci employs more than 60 people worldwide, including a strong research and development team at the company’s headquarters in Israel that will be merging with Kaltura’s Israel-based technology team. Tvinci’s founders, Ofer Shayo and Ido Wiesenberg, and key executives, Avidan Lamdan and Amir Eilat, will be joining Kaltura’s top management team in a variety of global positions.
Tvinci’s customer base includes TV providers from Latin America, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, which further accelerates Kaltura’s rapid growth in these regions. Other Tvinci customers include: Eutelsat in Germany, MediaCorp in Singapore, Liberty Global in the Netherlands, Solar Entertainment in the Philippines and Yes in Israel. These customers join Kaltura’s global media customer base, which includes: Sesame Workshop, HBO, ABC, Warner Brothers, Paramount, DirecTV, Turner, and Wikipedia.
“This is a very exciting time at Kaltura. Just three months after securing an additional $47 million in funding, we are delivering on our promise to rapidly accelerate our growth and innovation,” said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO. “The acquisition of Tvinci completes our transition from focusing largely on VOD assets and ad-based monetisation, to providing an equal emphasis on live/linear programming and an authenticated Pay OTT TV experience. We are also very excited to broaden our offerings for the service provider markets, and to further boost our social, collaboration, and personalisation tools. But beyond anything else we are honoured and thrilled to be joining forces with Tvinci’s talented team. Ofer and Ido, along with Avidan and Amir, have built a remarkable company with an amazing product line and a superb culture. We look forward to realizing the great synergy between our strong offerings and teams.”
“Since our inception in 2007 we’ve been committed to bringing new TV experiences to viewers worldwide,” said Ofer Shayo, CEO and Co-Founder of Tvinci. “We’ve consistently and successfully predicted market behaviour and trends and are exceptionally proud of our illustrious list of customers across the world. This acquisition means that we now have the resources to move into new territories and continue to change the way that the world watches TV. We are very excited to join the experienced team at Kaltura and believe that our technology will bring additional dimensions such as social and personal experiences to their current offering.”
Yekutiel added: “Kaltura’s mission is to power any video experience. While the most obvious market for OTT is in the media world, we have seen growing interest in Pay OTT services from both our education and enterprise customers. Just last month we published the results of our annual ‘State of Video in Education’ survey, based on respondents from more than 300 global educational institutions. The survey showed that 64 per cent of respondents believe that their institution would be interested in a Netflix-like education video portal to which consumers could subscribe for self-enrichment. We also plan to leverage the combined Kaltura-Tvinci technology to enhance our enterprise and education video solutions with advanced personalisation and social functionalities.”
The acquisition of Tvinci enhances Kaltura’s existing OTT offering, introducing a user-centric approach with interactive & social experience and the means to optimise monetisation on every screen. In addition, the combined offering presents telco-grade OTT features such as its ability to integrate to complex eco-systems and the modularity of the solution. The Tvinci platform, which similarly to the Kaltura platform is API-based, will be fully integrated into the Kaltura OTT offering in the coming months, and will be presented at Kaltura Connect – The Video Experience Conference – in New York City, in June.
The Kaltura Pay OTT TV offering now includes:
• Kaltura MediaGo Turnkey OTT Product: MediaGo is a turnkey OTT product, which can be fully branded, offering an out of the box Netflix-like portal and apps that support a range of business models including SVOD, TVOD and ad-based monetization options. Other capabilities include deep social and personalisation features, including content discovery and social network integration for targeting each user personally with the right content, comprehensive customer management, subscription management, payment gateway and billing tools, including the ability to create custom packages and bundles for specific users and profiles, as well as advanced A/B testing and analytics capabilities which provide real-time monitoring for campaign management.
• Bespoke OTT and TVE Solutions: Cable, satellite or landline operators and telcos with an existing infrastructure and preferred systems in place can leverage Kaltura’s modular API-based OTT offering, which easily integrates with legacy systems, and allows customers to pick and choose between using the Kaltura built-in components or mix-and-match the various components with their own existing infrastructure or services of choice.