RKKVC, Redge invest in Vestigit
July 16, 2021
By Colin Mann
OTT and edge computing specialist Redge Technologies and Polish private venture capital fund RKKVC have invested 2 million Zloty (€436,000) in Vestigit, a Polish start-up originating from Wrocław University of Science and Technology which has developed proprietary technology that it says improves security of video online.
Vestigit’s solution applies a unique watermark to content, reducing the risk of unauthorised distribution. The company obtained the funds for further development of product and of global sales structures.
“We want to build solid foundations in the combined three key areas for us, such as multimedia, cybersecurity and AI, and this is where we see our advantage,” commented Rafał Radawiec, founder and head of Vestigit. “They are well known to everyone separately, while their combination is the complete innovation. Although the product is still at the testing stage, we receive many inquiries from leading global content providers who have noticed that Vestigit can solve their problem. The CoV-19 pandemic and the development of premium online video only reinforced the belief that Vestigit solutions are needed. In the future these solutions should be a standard clause in contracts for sports broadcasting or Premium VoD.”
“TV creators and broadcasters suffer huge losses every year due to illegal distribution and access to video content,” added Mateusz Bodio, Managing Director of RKKVC. “It is estimated that by 2024 they may exceed $12 billion per year. The current COVID situation has only increased these losses due to the rapidly growing demand for video streaming and premium video distribution online. Solutions such as those offered by Vestigit can effectively contribute to reducing this phenomenon. Vestigit has developed a completely new approach to the protection of video content, a new technology that allows, for example, to track down the place where copyright-relevant material may be located. We paid attention to the company’s unconventional approach, and it is also worth noting that PoC was held at Canal+ and that talks with global CDN suppliers (content delivery network) are already underway. ”
“The Vestigit product is a perfect complement to the Redge Media platform, which we have been developing for many years,” commented Przemysław Frasunek, board member of Redge Technologies. “In turn, the investment process itself shows that underestimated gems appear on the Polish start-up market – entities that have developed a specialized, but difficult to understand technology. We want to focus on the support of such entities in the future. One of the paths we are considering to further implement this strategy is through an IPO.”
Vestigit was established in 2018 as a response to the need to translate many years of research and development work into business and financial success. It is a company specialising in cybersecurity. Vestigium is a software that protects video content through the use of watermarks, thanks to which it allows you to find the page on which the content has been unlawfully shared. The project received funding from the National Center for Research and Development in the Intelligent Development Program, taking second place in the competition for 332 participants.
The Vestigit solution uses steganographic mechanisms. They enable creation of a covert communication channel through which a unique identifier of the viewer is conveyed. The most important feature of the solution is the very high resistance of the watermark to its deliberate or accidental damage. This was achieved thanks to the development of a multi-stage marking process, by means of edge computing and artificial intelligence, in particular – Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), which is an innovation on the global scale. An important element of the product is also a tool that supports automated search for protected content on the public Internet and social media.