Aditya Sahay, ClipWeave – Video Search and Analytic Solutions

Established in 2009, ClipWeave defines itself as a business-to-business ‘video analysis and media services’ company focused on helping clients in various industries get the most out of their videos.

Driven by research, its services are ably supported by industry experts in data analysis and outsourcing processes. Its technical strength lies in the video-processing domain and includes advanced artificial intelligence techniques, which are further leveraged to provide unique outsourcing and automation solutions for video-centric workflows.

However, its presence in a niche field resulted in initial challenges on the sales front, said Aditya Sahay, the dynamic young co-founder of ClipWeave. “In addition, we spent time and money on technology issues when it was more important to talk to potential customers and understand the market. My co-founder and mentor, Manoj Misra, taught me the concept of NIHITO — nothing important happens in the office. I regularly flouted their principle because technology forms my comfort zone,” he said.

Nonetheless, the duo soon established ClipWeave — founded with nothing but their personal savings — as a unique player in the market, with an aim to build it as the most desired place to work for the best technical brains in the industry. “I was a techie not too long ago, and my knees would shake during sales meetings. But, over a period of time, my confidence and sales abilities have improved,” Sahay said.

Sahay worked with one of the largest enterprise software firms before striking out on his own. “Being in a large firm means utilising a lot of creativity and energy on trivial coding tasks and tedious process. But entrepreneurship is like a thriller: you never know what’s going to happen next. A regular job is like a long-drawn soap opera where hardly anything changes for months and insignificant events such as family dinners are blown out of proportion,” he said. “And the highest high in a regular job is nowhere near the average day in a start-up!”

Now, ClipWeave promises to change the way people search for video content. The traditional method involves tagging each video with certain text. Though the company has software with this capability, it is integrating its feature analysis techniques to automate the tagging process, which means that every video will not have to be tagged in order to be found. “Unlike text, which can be parsed and analysed by software, videos pose a great challenge and thus offer great opportunity,” said Sahay, who graduated with a BTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee in 2006.

Budding entrepreneurs, Sahay says, tend to come across many people offering ‘expert’ advice. “Listen to them and make a note of whatever makes sense. But don’t let them influence you too much. To quote my mentor, ‘if you’re successful, everything you did becomes the next success mantra’,” he said.

ClipWeave has also developed certain in-house tools that extract features from videos, such as hard-burned text and commercial breaks; these tools automate many of the manual processes in the lifecycle of a video. The company’s aim, now, is for its technology to add value to the different stages of the lifecycle of all kinds of video content.

Though ClipWeave, functioning with more than 10 employees out of an office in Greater Noida, is still trying to find its footing in the industry, it has avoided one common mistake made by start-ups, that of spending too much too soon. “Many start-ups, especially in niche technology areas, make this mistake. Our biggest achievement is the near-zero expense base before revenue starts flowing in,” Sahay said. The company’s current sources of revenue are enterprise software sales, custom software development, technology licensing and outsourced (specialist) video tagging services.

YourStory wishes Aditya and ClipWeave success and hope to bring to you many more milestones from their end.