The resurgence of InVideo: Slowly, then all at once

Not long after the venture funding boom and tech hiring craze of 2021, Mumbai-headquartered InVideo was staring at a bleak future.

The company, which offered an online, browser-based video editor, had seen revenue growth plateau at just 2-3% per month and new user sign-ups dry up. Its team was bloated, having grown to 200 people after all the frenzied pandemic hiring—the company even offered tech hires the latest iPhones to get them through the door—and investors proposed getting bankers on board to sell off the company. 

It was at this point that Sanket Shah, the 30-something co-founder and CEO of InVideo, offered money back to an investor roster that included the likes of Peak XV Partners (then Sequoia India), Tiger Global, RTP Global, Hummingbird, and others. Shah was determined to not let InVideo go quietly into the night.

“I requested them to not sell. We had raised approximately $30 million in 2021, and I told them they could take $25 million back. I’ll rebuild the company with $5 million. I felt like I was responsible for everything that had happened,” a very candid Shah tells The CapTable over a Zoom call.

He describes the period between May 2021 to August 2022 as the “toughest” for the company, which had been building video-editing software since 2017. “We got back to our senses and started laying off people in October 2022,” he shares.