100ms Raises $4.5 Mn To Help Zoom-Style Video Conferencing Startups With Infra Needs

Bengaluru-based live video infrastructure startup 100ms raised $4.5 Mn in a seed funding round led by Accel with participation from Strive VC.

100ms offers white-label video conferencing infrastructure and software. Using its service, companies can integrate a video conferencing feature within their in-house websites and apps. 

When the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns struck, video conferencing became the new norm. Kshitij Gupta, Aniket Behera and Sarvesh Dwivedi saw this as an opportunity when they launched 100ms in October 2020. 

The startup promises integration of ‘zoom-quality video conferencing’ with your services within hours instead of the weeks or months it takes with other platforms. Its clients include Paytm Insider, BookMyShow’s Townscript and Circle. 

100ms will be using the funds raised to build up its engineering team in Bengaluru, so that it can enhance the product with more templates of live use cases. 

Even though major platforms like Zoom, Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams have taken up a big share of the corporate video conferencing market. In India, Reliance’s Jio also entered this space after launching a similar product (inspired by Zoom), JioMeet. 

But there are still a few gaps that new players can address. 

Let’s take Zoom as an example. Its popularity shot through the roof during the pandemic despite the fact that established platforms like Skype already exist. This is because it was built to be flexible enough for different kinds of communication.

However, these solutions at times become unattractive to enterprises that are looking for custom features like ticketing, payments etc. 

“Zoom is getting unbundled. Huge markets are being unlocked which are now leveraging white labelled audio/video,” said Ankit Behera, cofounder and COO of 100ms. 

According to a report by Mordor Intelligence, the global communication platform as a service (CPaaS) market was worth $ 4.54 Bn in 2020, and is expected to grow to $26.03 Bn in 2026.

In September last year, virtual events platform Airmeet raised $12 Mn in Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital India. Earlier this year, another events platform Hubilo grabbed $23.5 Mn in funding from Lightspeed.