Open source video platform company Kaltura announced today that it has acquired Tvinci, a global provider of Pay OTT TV services. Kaltura says that the acquisition "cements its role as the only pure-play video technology company to power any video experience across all markets (including Media & Entertainment, Enterprise, Education) and all channels (e.g. Multimedia Service Providers such as MVPDs, Telcos, MSPs, and Cloud Vendors)." Financial details were not disclosed, but the value of the deal is estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars.
Kaltura raised $47 million in venture capital in February and claims to have experienced massive revenue and customer growth in the past year. It says that the acquisition of Tvinci strengthens its Pay-TV operator proposition and creates the world’s most comprehensive end-to-end Pay OTT TV offering.
Kaltura cites Pricewaterhouse Coopers as estimating that the OTT market will reach $17.44 billion by 2017, and that it is one of the fastest growing segments in the media industry, with hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide watching some or all of their content online in a variety of ad-supported, subscription, and transactional service offerings.
Kaltura has already begun integrating Tvinci’s technology into its OTT MediaGo product. The integrated Kaltura-Tvinci platform enables operators and telcos, media companies, content owners and distributors to reach and monetize every user on every device. The platform supports live, on demand, and catchup services; SVOD, TVOD and ad-based monetization; social interaction and a personalized experience.
Tvinci employs more than 60 people worldwide, including a research and development team at the company’s headquarters in Israel that will be merging with Kaltura’s Israel-based technology team. Tvinci’s founders, Ofer Shayo and Ido Wiesenberg, and key executives, Avidan Lamdan and Amir Eilat, will be joining Kaltura’s top management team in a variety of global positions.
Tvinci customer includes TV providers from Latin America, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, which further accelerates Kaltura’s rapid growth in these regions: Eutelsat in Germany, MediaCorp in Singapore, Liberty Global in the Netherlands, Solar Entertainment in the Philippines and Yes in Israel. These customers join Kaltura’s global media customer base, which includes: Sesame Workshop, HBO, ABC, Warner Brothers, Paramount, DirecTV, Turner, and Wikipedia.
"This is a very exciting time at Kaltura. Just 3 months after securing an additional $47 million in funding, we are delivering on our promise to rapidly accelerate our growth and innovation," said Kaltura co-founder, chairman and CEO Ron Yekutiel, “The acquisition of Tvinci completes our transition from focusing largely on VOD assets and ad-based monetization, to providing an equal emphasis on live/linear programming and an authenticated Pay OTT TV experience. We are also very excited to broaden our offerings for the service provider markets, and to further boost our social, collaboration, and personalization tools. But beyond anything else we are honored and thrilled to be joining forces with Tvinci’s talented team. Ofer and Ido, along with Avidan and Amir, have built a remarkable company with an amazing product line and a superb culture. We look forward to realizing the great synergy between our strong offerings and teams.”
“Since our inception in 2007 we’ve been committed to bringing new TV experiences to viewers worldwide,” said Ofer Shayo, CEO and co-founder of Tvinci. “We’ve consistently and successfully predicted market behavior and trends and are exceptionally proud of our illustrious list of customers across the world. This acquisition means that we now have the resources to move into new territories and continue to change the way that the world watches TV. We are very excited to join the experienced team at Kaltura and believe that our technology will bring additional dimensions such as social and personal experiences to their current offering.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 1, 2014
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