Amagi’s valuation enigma after 14-year journey to unicorndom

Early-stage startups undergo multiple pivots before arriving at a viable product. It’s almost a rite of passage. Take InMobi, India’s first unicorn that was founded in 2007. Initially, it offered an SMS-based search feature, but found its calling in mobile marketing.

SaaS company Amagi, which came up around the same time, had a similar journey of self-discovery, though the process was longer. It focused on geotargeted TV ads, i.e. promotions tailored for a particular location, at first before shifting to the business of video playout services a good eight years later.

Its cloud-based software enables broadcasters and other content producers to transmit video to audiences across viewing platforms (regular or smart TVs, streaming). Top entertainment and media organisations, such as Discovery, Viacom18, NBCUniversal and Warner, are its clients. NBC, in fact, used its tech to air the Olympics in the US last year.

Despite being a prominent media-technology player, Bengaluru-headquartered Amagi is an enigma in terms of valuation. It gained unicorn status only this March with a $95-million funding round, nearly 14 years after being founded. Most startups today would struggle to comprehend such a timeline.