(Data On) Content Is King

As artificial intelligence, machine learning and IoT grow in relevance, a media consumption repository becomes increasingly relevant. Zapr Media Labs is one such media consumption repository, which is a fusion of digital signal processing and data analytics driving media insights and targeted TV to mobile audience, poised to make a dent in the media industry.

According to co-founder Sandipan Mondal, “Zapr Media Labs was co-founded in 2012 by IIM-A batchmates. In just over five years, Zapr has analysed over 100 billion minutes of media, to date. Having started with linear television, it is now expanding to other media formats, such as, radio, movies-in-theatre and video OTT”. Headquartered in Bangalore, the company has offices in Mumbai and Gurgaon. It has also recently opened its first international office in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Zapr Media Labs analyses what millions of individuals are watching on television (and other offline media), and use this data to answer various questions that broadcasters, advertisers and media agencies grapple with. “Zapr’s disruptive technology and analytics platform is built around a proprietary automated content recognition platform, which is benchmarked as one of the best in the world. The company’s focus on digital signal processing R&D and its capabilities in big data analytics in the traditional media industry differentiates it from other global companies,” says 32-year-old Mondal.

Speaking about their journey since 2012, Mondal says, “Like with most startups, Zapr’s journey has been an incredible roller-coaster ride with rapid growth as well as numerous hurdles that had to be overcome over the years. With a strong focus on people, culture and a passion for delivering innovative products to its client base, Zapr has grown tremendously over the past few years.” Zapr works with nearly all the media buying agencies, research agencies and broadcasters, as well as over a hundred brands in India.

The company intends to grow into the leading digital-signal-processing and big-data analytics company, with innovative products across the domains of audio recognition and computer vision. Zapr also helps advertisers reach out to people based on their media consumption preferences and  work very hard to ensure that the privacy of their users is respected.

“The global media and advertising industry is nearly a trillion-dollars industry, and yet is plagued by numerous issues that are all centred around lack of data, to drive decision making. This lack of data on media consumption trends and preferences leads to massive inefficiencies worth hundreds of billions of dollars”.

Zapr’s technology platform and its data analytics capabilities, allow the industry to measure the real impact of their content, at an individual level, tens of millions of people, as well across time, location and viewership patterns. The company’s data analytics platform analyses over “10 times the data that Shazam does globally, every single day” according to Mondal.

In addition to data analytics and insights, Zapr’s audience engagement solution has provided a breakthrough to the media and advertising industry, to drive efficiency across their fragmented and unoptimised advertising spends on television and digital mediums. “The company creates a real cross-screen experience that is unduplicated, measurable and based on deterministic data, unlike any other media data company globally,” adds Mondal.

On his motto as an entrepreneur, Mondal says, “I paraphrase Confucius:  If you choose a job that you like, work on a problem worth solving and surround yourself with people you care about, then you will never have to work a single day in your life.”

Growth potential: With artificial intelligence, machine learning and IoT being the drivers of the world economy, and media consumption to grow across mediums,

Zapr is well placed to grow into the company of the future.