This text is sponsored by VdoCipher
Between 2010 and 2015, Siddhant Jain and Vibhav Sinha attended IIT Delhi. Throughout this era, earlier than the rise of OTT (over-the-top media service), many college students resorted to watching pirated films and downloading pirated books and programs. Their consciousness concerning the impression of piracy grew after they noticed an in depth buddy affected by it.
“My roommate Satish used to show chemistry to Class 11 and 12 college students in Mathura and Delhi each weekend for a 12 months. When on-line teaching grew to become widespread, he considered transitioning his lessons on-line. Nevertheless, he was involved about sharing his rigorously crafted notes on-line, fearing that his content material may be leaked and distributed,” says Siddhant to The Higher India.
Satish’s quandary led the 2 buddies to understand the gravity of the scenario.
“We seen that on-line video piracy was adversely affecting academics like Satish after they tried to add good content material on-line. Many people would obtain these class movies and distribute them on platforms like Telegram, YouTube or WhatsApp, reaching a big viewers. This example resulted in real academics shedding the chance to enrol new college students and shedding revenue as a consequence,” provides Siddhant.
Video piracy doesn’t simply hurt film and present producers; it additionally impacts academics and creators of academic content material. In the end if academics don’t put their greatest content material out on the web, it’s a loss to the scholar group as properly. In accordance with a 2022 report by Ankura Piracy Statistics, India ranks because the third-largest contributor to visits to content material piracy web sites, following the US and Russia, with over seven billion visits.
In 2014, whereas they had been nonetheless college students, these two engineers launched into a mission to unravel this problem utilizing their video encryption expertise.
Offering safety in opposition to on-line piracy
With a eager curiosity in encryption and software program, Vibhav determined to mix encryption with cloud-based video gamers. Siddhant joined him to check the product and assist with the gross sales. They first piloted their prototype with a finance-based e-learning platform, and after some tweaks, launched VdoCipher in September 2014.
VdoCipher gives extremely safe DRM (Digital Rights Administration) encryption — a safety that protects movies from unauthorised entry — and user-based watermarking. That is mixed with a wise customisable video participant to make sure that movies will not be illegally downloaded, and that viewers have an excellent playback expertise.
“We offer safety by means of DRM encryption and watermarking. Mainly, any buyer, be it a trainer or an ed-tech platform, is supplied with a video dashboard. They add the content material to that dashboard the place it’s encrypted, guaranteeing entry solely to authorised customers,” says Siddhant, CEO, VdoCipher.
He continues, “On cellphones, we are able to stop display screen seize additionally. Since this will’t be prevented on computer systems in all instances, we offer user-based watermarking to discourage sharing. In the event that they select to share the screenshot, their identify/person ID will seem on the picture; it additionally helps us hint them.”
The engineer duo declare to supply ‘Hollywood grade safety’ as they use the identical expertise utilized by Netflix and different giant streaming providers. Their USP can be their potential to offer this anti-piracy expertise to everybody — from a small trainer taking a web-based class to giant ed-tech corporations.
“We use Google DRM encryption and Apple DRM encryption, which give very excessive safety. They’re the instruments utilized by Netflix, Hollywood and Bollywood films. We had been the primary firm in India to offer such a excessive stage of safety expertise in an easy-to-use manner, notes Siddhant.
“This tech was not obtainable to e-learning platforms because it was troublesome to combine. We have now made it straightforward and accessible,” he shares.
A authorities examination preparation course platform (UPSC and others) with over 10,000 on-line college students and 17 centres throughout the nation provides that their movies had been getting leaked because the streaming platform was not safe. In 2019, they began utilizing VdoCipher’s service and noticed a marked distinction, with extra academics trusting them. “Partnering with VdoCipher stopped video sharing and helped us in model constructing too. Lecturers additionally developed confidence in our model,” says a spokesperson of the platform.
Apart from safety, VdoCipher additionally gives clean streaming for sluggish web connections, which helps premium content material attain college students in Tier II and III cities. VdoCipher additionally allows offline playback on mobiles and a bunch of interactive participant options to make sure the perfect pupil expertise.
“Our objective is to make sure that college students from any distant areas in our nation ought to get entry to premium video content material. Poor community connectivity shouldn’t be a hindrance in accessing high quality schooling,” he provides.
VdoCipher makes use of a usage-based pricing mannequin the place clients pay primarily based on how a lot information their college students or viewers use. The duo claims to have over 3,000 paying clients throughout 100 nations, streaming over seven million hours of content material on a month-to-month foundation. They are saying that as COVID led to a growth within the ed-tech area, the necessity for content material safety can be booming.
“We have now additionally seen a considerable enhance in pupil footfall. This safety has helped us do justice to critical college students, academics and different enterprise stakeholders who had been placing efforts when it comes to money and time,” provides the client.
Serving to academics defend their content material
Over the previous seven years, the journey for these 30-year-old entrepreneurs has been full of challenges. The sector of safety expertise continually evolves, requiring common software program updates.
“We have now had three updates simply within the final 5 years, which required us to vary our software program every time. Earlier, we had been offering our software program by means of a flash participant. When this characteristic was faraway from browsers, we needed to fully shift our expertise, which took a number of effort and time,” informs Siddhant.
They confronted hiccups in securing their preliminary funding as this area was comparatively new in India. “However now”, they are saying, “there isn’t a trying again!” At the moment, the engineers are aiding educators not simply in India but in addition in different areas like Africa.
A physics trainer from Tunisia, Africa, who launched Tunisia’s first on-line course platform, is amongst their clients. Siddhant explains that when the trainer began utilizing VdoCipher eight years in the past, he had 200 college students. As we speak, he has over 4 lakh college students and over 450 academics.
Their buddy Satish, who impressed VdoCipher, is now a buyer himself instructing chemistry by means of his teaching lessons to college students in Haryana.
Edited by Pranita Bhat
