Media-tech Company Laminar Raises $5 Mn In Seed Funding The first of its kind zero-code OTT enabler eyes business expansion in Asia, Latin America and Africa by 2023
By Soumya Duggal •
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London-based Laminar, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that enables content owners to launch over-the-top (OTT) services, has raised $5.11 million in seed funding led by Artha India Ventures (AIV) and Leo Capital. Garuda Ventures, Cloudcap and Sampson Acquisitions also participated in the round. This raise will accelerate product development and market expansion, said a statement.
"Laminar will immensely benefit from the collective experience of our investors in rapidly scaling our business and expanding our global footprint. In (data and analytics firm) Nielsen's recent "State of Play' report, the number of people subscribing to four or more services has more than doubled in the US — this is a secular trend around the world. Such growth will only accelerate as consumers coalesce around (and pay for) content that speaks to their cultural reality," said Narendra Nag, co-founder and CEO, Laminar.
With an anticipated compounded annual growth rate of around 20 per cent, OTT has entered the mainstream space but needs to outsource the making of complex technologies to over 30 service providers. According to a report by RBSA Advisors, India's video OTT market is expected to grow to $12.5 billion by 2030 from $1.5 billion at present.
"This is our first significant investment in Europe, and we are glad that it is in Laminar. Laminar gives content creators the backbone to challenge the duopoly of Netflix and Amazon Prime by building the world's first zero code cloud-based PaaS offering. We were pleasantly surprised by the width of the client base that needs Laminar to solve their pressing issues," said Anirudh A. Damani, director, Artha India Ventures.
"Media companies can see content consumption rapidly shifting away from cable, satellite and DTH worldwide. Laminar has timed this industry transition beautifully with a product that is ready today for media companies who don't want to spend time and money re-inventing the wheel, and we are excited to partner with them to help create the next global leader in the media-tech space," said Rajul Garg, founding partner, Leo Capital.
Founded in 2020, Laminar enables content owners to launch a global OTT service in 12 weeks or less. According to the company, it takes over the heavy lifting of creating back-end technologies from OTT players so that they can focus on their core business of content creation. Media companies get the ability to customize and launch apps across all classes of devices, to set up multiple types of monetization options, to meet all tax and compliance requirements and to get a complete data and analytics suite at zero capital expenditure. It enabled Chaupal, a leading multi-regional OTT platform from India, to launch in 110 countries in 12 weeks, four times faster than the average industry timeframe, said the statement. Laminar has a presence in London, Toronto, Wroclaw, Dubai, New Delhi and Singapore and an engineering team based out of Wroclaw and Barcelona.
