Vidyo Is Following An API Strategy

A recent Global Market Insights report estimates the global video conferencing market to grow more than 10% annually to $20 billion by 2024. But video conferences are just one of the reasons why video services are used in organizations. According to a Market Study Report, the Enterprise Video market encompasses other end-to-end solutions that enable organizations to ingest, transcode, store, manage, protect, and publish both live and on-demand video for internal use, as well as to video webcast. This market is estimated to grow 14% annually to $7.9 billion by 2024.

Vidyo’s Offerings

For the first couple of years, Layered Media operated in a stealth mode. The team worked on developing a video conferencing solution that delivered high-definition video irrespective of the other end points and the network. It released its first products in 2007 and renamed itself as Vidyo.

Today, Vidyo’s Cloud platform offers a global real-time video interaction platform that provides enterprise-grade video quality and healthcare-grade privacy on its patented routing technology. Its technology boasts of superior quality even in network challenged environments, offering “unsurpassed error resiliency – more than double the industry average”. Besides being utilized as an internal collaboration and meeting platform, Vidyo also offers a customer engagement solution VidyoEngage that can easily be integrated into the organization’s existing contact center or CRM platform.

Hackensack, New Jersey-based Vidyo was founded in 2005 by Alex Eleftheriadis, Isaac Levy, and Ofer Shapiro. Prior to setting up Vidyo, Ofer Shapiro was working at Radvision where he had developed the first IP video conferencing bridge and programmable gatekeeper technology. He wanted to develop a video conferencing network that could deliver better solutions despite standard bandwidth and networking issues of packet loss and latency. Back in the day, the only products that offered superior video capabilities were expensive as they relied on dedicated networks and expensive Multipoint Control Units. To solve for this problem, Ofer focused on improving the compression technology used for videos. By 2005, he had teamed up with his partners to set up Vidyo, which was then known as Layered Media.

Vidyo also launched Vidyo.io, a communications platform as a service that offers video APIs that enterprises and developers can embed in business applications. Vidyo.io is an easy to use API that natively integrates video communications into apps and websites to deliver a seamless user experience. Over the years, Vidyo has ensured that its production ready APIs and SDKs can be used to rapidly add video to all supported devices. The solution has seen interesting use cases since its launch. For instance, healthcare providers are using Vidyo to connect physicians with patients for activities ranging from routine checkups and home health services to stroke assessments and surgical consults. Vidyo APIs deliver video-enabled healthcare services to connect physicians with patients.

Recently, Vidyo also announced an integration with the Tyto Care examination device to enhance remote examination capabilities for healthcare providers. The Tyto Care handheld devices help examine the heart, lungs, skin, ears, throat, and abdomen and measure body temperature to allow remote diagnosis of acute care situations. Together with Vidyo, the two will provide an advanced level of video interaction and live, remote exams to the patients anywhere, anytime.

Vidyo’s products have been well-liked by the industry. Its customers include CERN, Etsy, Philips, Alibaba, and Kaiser, to name a few.

Vidyo’s Financials

Meanwhile, Vidyo remains privately held. It operates on a subscription-based model that allows free usage for the first 4,000 minutes. After the first 4,000 minutes, users can pay a monthly fee of $65 to get 6,500 participant minutes per month, standard support, group video chat capabilities, customizable layouts, screen sharing, text chat, and access to mobile, desktop, and browser SDKs. Additional minutes are charged at $0.01 per minute. Enterprise level pricing options are also sold separately. Vidyo does not disclose its financials, but according to Owler, it is operating at revenues of $25 million annually.

It has raised $170 million so far in 12 funding rounds. Its last funding round was held in July 2018 when it raised $12 million at an undisclosed valuation. Investors in the company include Sevin Rosen Funds, Rho Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Menlo Ventures, QuestMark Partners, Luminari Capital, Blue Cloud Ventures, and Juniper Networks.

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