Deeptech Startup Myelin To Launch Zero Re-Buffer OTT Technology In India

Former Tata Sons CTO Dr. Gopichand Katragadda has recently said that he will soon be launching Fovea AI (artificial intelligence) in India early next year.

Myelin’s Fovea AI reportedly offers zero re-buffer OTT at a fractional cost. “The Myelin solution performs sub-pixel convolution and further processing, real-time and at the edge that enables deployment at 30 fps and even 60 fps, thus enabling both video and game streaming,” Katragadda said in an interview with the Financial Express.

The deeptech startup will first focus on India-like markets before launching the product for the global premium market. The company is also looking to infuse Series A funds by May 2020.

The Bengaluru-based startup raised a $1 Mn seed funding round led by Endiya Partners in September this year. The company had announced to use the funding to accelerate product development and market penetration.

Myelin Foundry was founded by Dr. Gopichand Katragadda, Ganesh Suryanarayanan, and Aditi Olemann in early 2019. The startup works towards transforming transform human experiences and industry outcomes by building AI algorithms on video, voice, and sensor data for edge devices in various sectors including media & entertainment, health & wellness, and national security.

“Today our solution provides real-time video super-resolution and artefact removal, greater than 30% reduction in average streaming cost including reduced transmission cost, reduced transcoding cost, and reduced storage cost. We also significantly enhanced viewer QoE providing device-aware consistent video quality (upto 4K), eliminating rebuffering (at minimum 200 kbps), and we eliminate bitrate switching,” Katragadda said.

Why Myelin Bets High On Fovea AI

Fovea AI apparently gives the optimal video quality customised to the specific content and genre that the viewer is watching using the power of deep learning. Fovea AI intelligently leverages the capability of the viewer’s edge-device to provide up to 4K quality video.

“Fovea AI reduces in data usage for viewers allowing two times the number of HD videos at same (limited) data plan or using half the bandwidth for 4K quality video (for TV),” Katragadda said.

He also spoke about how future opportunity includes dynamic range optimisation, content-aware video search, ad insertion, summarisation, logo, brand and face recognition and related call-to-action by learning, visual content, audio, style and other aspects of the video and posters.

Video streaming not being a profitable business because of unwillingness to pay for streamed content and re-buffering being a big challenge are two reasons the company is going Fovea AI. “Myelin’s immediate focus is to accelerate the M&E industry’s transition to over-the-top (OTT) streaming services. Our OTT product, Fovea AI, deploys on edge devices and enables the highest quality visual experience at the lowest bandwidth consumption for OTT providers and viewers,” he said.