AaoNxt: Regional OTT giant in the making

About AaoNxt

“We have a sizeable audience in our market and cater to more than 50 million audiences globally. We have some of the most stunning and modern content, as well as the best-in-class technology and world-class premium viewing experience” says AaoNxt founder and CEO Kaushik Das. “We continuously improve our technology. We have a long-term perspective, which has helped us emerge as the top regional OTT platform”.

The decision to build a Regional OTT platform

“During the pandemic, the OTT segment witnessed a significant increase in viewership, the media business thrived across the country, but our local content struggled to gain popularity, and the industry faced a tough time”.

“We have a culture that is centuries-old and exceptionally rich. We have so many universal stories, stories that stay with you, which the world has yet to see. But we’ve lagged in investing in video content that brings these stories to the world. I wanted to change that” says Kaushik.

“We made the decision to build an OTT platform that would serve as the flagship of the East India’s film Industry. From my extensive experience in the media industry, I knew that to effectively compete with our competitors and distinguish ourselves, we needed to provide an exceptional experience to captivate our audience”.

The challenge with building it ourselves

“We wanted complete control over the look and feel of the video experience, and overall, the audience experience for our subscribers. As we began to explore, there were many decisions. How do we go about hiring engineers with video expertise to build a platform of this scale and fitting our vision. How do we balance getting a content creation and distribution effort off the ground and scale that. Both are heavy lifts.” adds Kaushik. “We had to manage our bandwidth and resources for quick time to market”.

Kaushik is not alone. It takes a group of video experts to stream online video that performs well. The video spectrum is incredibly diverse and evolving. And video developers are hard to find, train and retain.  It will take significant investment in hiring, building, and experimenting to do it the standards modern audiences expect. Time and money do not essentially take business and technology risk off the table.  

“This made me explore outside tech solutions more seriously”.

Vendor evaluation: expertise and people

“We evaluated many vendors. While many had some video experience, I didn’t fell feel they had a handle on full end-to-end video publishing, storage, and delivery system for web and mobile. Not to mention a realistic understanding of the SVOD and AVOD business model. It was hard to nail everything down in one place” said Ram Patnaik, COO of AaoNXT.

“The discussion with FastPix team was different. They had a complete picture of the video streaming, viewer experience and importantly monetization. They were able to fill gaps and help us make choices and avoid some choices. And their end-to-end video solution was ideal for us to get up and running without the engineering and execution risk”.

“What was also great about with the FastPix team is it felt like we were all working together.  They felt like part of our team, not just vendors. They were with us every step of the way, from brainstorming to execution. That has been great.”

Everything to stream content globally

Working together as almost one team, AaoNXT and FastPix, were able to get up and running with video encoding, CMS, and delivery globally. The team optimized the solution for both web and mobile. “Many subscribers consume our content on mobile, and from a large spread of mobile devices” adds Ram Patnaik. “So, we ensured we optimized for this reality as we had to deliver the same experience in different settings”. FastPix’s developer-friendly APIs and underlying features such as just in time encoding and adaptive bit-rate streaming helped AaoNXT achieve the quality of viewing experience they were looking for.

Using a solution like FastPix, also gave AaoNXt the freedom to customize the look, feel and product experience per their requirements. This has allowed them to nurture an experience that their users love and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with any national OTT platform.

Video Data to move quickly and grow subscribers

Launching a product is one side of the coin; tracking and improving represent the other side. This is where FastPix’ Video Data platform is a loyal wingman. “In our initial months, we were able to track playback errors by devices among other things, and gain insights on how adaptive our video stream was for multi-bandwidth instances. Things we would never have found otherwise.”

“And beyond issues, the data helps us identify opportunities for improvement and monetization. We discovered popular content by demographics, triggers that led to conversions, content categories with the most repeated views”.

“Not only did FastPix meet all our engineering and experience requirements, but they have also done it reliably. A reliable service is non-negotiable in our model. If we can’t be available when folks want it, where they want it and any time, they will just leave. And not come back,” said Kaushik Das.

Future proofed for growth

“FastPix helped us build a complete video publishing, storage, and delivery system rapidly with a lean team. The system is low-maintenance and reliable, freeing up our team to focus on other projects.

Our vision for the future of the OTT industry, is one of immense growth and potential.  AAONXT aims to lead this transformation by continuously pushing the boundaries of regional content and establishing new benchmarks for excellence.

Currently, with FastPix, we are actualizing different monetization models. We now offering content rental models and readying our AVOD model launch,” said Kaushik Das.