Here’s How Justbaat.AI Is Disrupting Mainstream Media With Its AI Assistants

The way we consume news today is going through a sea change, largely influenced by the widespread presence of social media platforms shaping our content consumption behaviours. Notably, the consumption of news among Indians has been on a steady decline both online and through television.

According to the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2023, there was a notable decline of 12 percentage points in both the overall consumption and sharing of news online between 2022 and 2023. Additionally, TV news consumption has seen a decline of 10 percentage points.

Amid the current information landscape, a blazing question arises — How is digital India fulfilling its news appetite? Well, the Reuters report considers YouTube as the most preferred social media platform for news with 56% of the respondents accessing it. The report then noted WhatsApp and Facebook as the most used channels for news consumption at 47% and 39%, respectively.

This trend has come as quite a revelation for many media houses, who are eyeing a shift from websites and television to social media platforms. However, the transition to social media platforms could be an uphill task for many.

For starters, the cost involved in creating content for social media could prove to be quite heavy on the pockets of the ones contemplating the move. Secondly, there may be a wide disparity between the cost of video production and the revenue generated from them.

Recognising this pain point in the media industry, former Airtel executives Shaurya Rao Nigam and Amandeep Kamboj brainstormed a potential solution to streamline the creation of digital audio/video content for media houses. In 2021, they founded Justbaat.AI to revolutionise digital content creation in the news media space.

Nigam, who also heads Justbaat’s sales function, says that the company capitalises on the video content creation gap that most media houses find difficult to bridge. 

“The need for an AI tool to ease the video creation process stems from the fact that most news consumers prefer to remain on social media platforms rather than engage with news content on companies’ websites. To drive traction on social media, the best way is videos due to the propensity of Indians to consume more content that way. However, churning out video content on these platforms requires an army of people. This is where we come in. By using our platform, 95% of this task is automated,” Nigam asserted. 

Stealing A Glance At Justbaat.AI’s Offerings

The video creation platform harnesses AI to simplify video production for users. It empowers users to create digital avatars, translate videos into 63 languages, and generate videos from text inputs.

Since its inception, Justbaat.AI has raised $500K to expand its tech stack. Speaking with Inc42, Justbaat’s CEO and cofounder Nigam said that Justbaat.AI’s platform is built on ChatGPT 3.5 LLM and is trained on over 2,000 hours of data accessed from its media clients like the Times of India, Amar Ujala, ABP, and NBT, just to name a few.

Justbaat.AI’s console offers eight options for video creation that can generate videos from a URL of a news piece, raw text content, a script, a video or an audio clip. Its other features include converting a concurrent topic to an AI-generated news video and audio format news to a video piece. 

In addition, the platform features an AI-generated news anchor, customisable by users and capable of speaking in multiple languages with different voice modulations. 

A user can utilise the Justbaat console free of cost for 30 videos with Justbaat watermark. Following its free offerings, the company charges a nominal INR 10,000 per month for 200 video minutes per month to INR 1.2 Lakh for 4,000 monthly video minutes. It also offers clothing options for anchors, and custom templates, among other things. 

Nigam said that a minute-long video can cost a company INR 5,000, and Justbaat reduces this cost to INR 50 per minute. Since its Beta launch in 2022, major Indian media players have been leveraging its metahuman-anchored videos and other platform services.

What’s On The Anvil?

Nigam told Inc42 that the startup was profitable and raking in revenues to the tune of INR 50 Lakh a month. Justbaat.AI also gets a 50% revenue share from the videos that media houses put out on their channels.

Talking about its projections, he said that the AI-led company is planning to expand its geographies. Nigam revealed that 90% of the company’s revenue comes from the domestic market. The remainder of the company’s business comes from its expansion in the SEA (South East Asia) market.

“As of now, we are working with 200+ digital publishers. From a global perspective, we haven’t even penetrated 2% of the digital publisher market, which is over 10K strong. We are not eyeing rapid expansion but want to take a more prudent approach,” Nigam added. 

The cofounder shared that besides SEA, the company is also targeting media houses in the Dubai and MENA (Middle East and North Africa) markets this fiscal year. It started its MENA foray in December 2023. Post this expansion, the startup will foray into the US and European markets. Currently, the company is on a hiring spree to make its off-shore expansion plans successful. 

Moving forward, Justbaat’s scope extends beyond the media industry as it sets its sights on providing marketing solutions for brands. 

“We have created a platform using which a brand can create its brand mascot for a very nominal fee. They can choose a persona for the mascot and based on this persona, AI can create a life like a metahuman. We have reached out to giants like Flipkart, Amazon, and Shiprocket, among others, to exchange the brand mascot service to the smaller brands that are in their portfolio,” Nigam added.

At a time when several AI companies are on the government’s radar, due to issues like fake information and deepfakes, Justbaat.AI wants to keep its operations purely B2B.

“Currently, we are enterprise-only and want to refrain from taking the creator route. This is because we want to prevent any possible situation where our AI bot is misused,” Nigam said. 

While Justbaat aims to facilitate growth for news media organisations, it faces its own set of challenges. Nigam acknowledges that optimising the sales function remains a hurdle due to the persistent lack of awareness about AI content.