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Interview with Kanaan Jemili, uCast Global

In a world of digital video, what’s the best way to distribute and monetize that streaming video content? San Diego-based uCast Global (www.ucastglobal.com), backed by Gary Winnick, is looking to tackle that entire area of content distribution, and is led by startup veteran Dr. Kanaan Jemili. Dr. Jemili was previously the CEO and President of NeuLion, and had been CEO and President of DivX, in addition to serving at Rovi. We caught up with Kanaan to learn more about uCast Global.

What is uCast?

Kanaan Jemili: uCast Global is a digital media company that is looking at creating a scalable global solution for online video. As you know, today, video is one of the primary means of communications from a personal, corporate, and entertainment level. The audience for video has grown into billions of people around the globe. The type of content people are enjoying today ranges from traditional movies and TV shows, to digital only content that you can see online, to snackable content and content that is live. The types of content that people are consuming globally has diversified greatly. What we specialize in, is the way we deliver this content in a seamless way, in high quality, with the latest technology available. In addition to the video, we also deliver everything around that video, including metadata, all the user information, all the subscriptions and monetization, and data that happens around video. That’s what uCast is all about. We’re part of the uCast Global Video Highway, which is our way of illustrating how content is being driven locally, regionally, and globally, using our platform, but also technology we have integrated and continue to integrate with our partners.

How is this different from a typical content delivery network (CDN)?

Kaaan Jemili: At uCast, we have a rich solution that encompasses multiple business models around delivery of content. By multiple ways, I mean free content, subscription content, and enterprise content, content that is packaged in video channels, and VOD viewing and so forth. We are unique in being an open platform, that allows for all of these variations to happen. The second thing, is instead of being just a platform, we also have content partners pre-integrated. There are more than 100 content providers around the world on our platform, ready to be deployed and distributed across countries. For instance, one of our targets are those who have large audiences, like mobile carriers. They’re like companies in the US like an ATT or Verizon, or an Orange in France, or others in Poland and Russia and other countries. These large mobile carriers have audiences, but something they don’t have is content services to attract and retain subscribers to a mobile network. We build products and services tied to mobile carriers. One thing we do very well, and which differentiates us from others, is we offer self-contained, local content, a global content and delivery network to actually get that content in front of users. By doing that, we are a turnkey business-in-a box. Inside that solution, we have technologies like artificial intelligence, data analytics ,and security for streaming machines, and so forth. Those technologies allow us to scale and offer a superior product for customers.

What’s the relationship of this company to Gary Winnick?

Kanaan Jemili: Garry Winnick had the idea a few years ago, when he saw the shift happening from traditional video to digital video. He saw that the industry was being disrupted globally, and actually started with the idea of building a new company that could be scalable, and flexible, and offer delivery of that content at competitive pricing. We bought our first company in 2017 to create this, and we rolled up a few companies to bring this vision to life.

Who are your core customers?

Kanaan Jemili:We have about six areas we focus on. Three very active, three have been deployed. The first one is telecom companies and mobile carriers. The second ones are media brands and companies and we have several of those brands on our platform. The third one is actually live sports. We have a property called Stadium Sports, where we are working with several new leagues to launch services. Those are the three active areas, and we have several customers and have made lots of headway there. We also have the music vertical, the broadcast vertical, and international and other broadcasters. Number six are publishers. As you know, publishers are also going through disruption, magazines are going to digital as well as video, and we’re helping publishers go and capitalize on the video side of publishing .

Why do these customers choose you rather than build their own systems—in particular, the carriers?

Kanaan Jemili: That’s a great question. In a lot of cases, they want to build their own system so that it will be unique. What we found out, is that if you want to build something on your own, you can spend a lot of money, and it takes time. If you have content to publish on your own network, you can bring in consultants to figure out what to do in this area, build a technology team, and assemble all the pieces to do video delivery, including the encoding, user management, and application development, and maybe you’ll be able to deploy it in nine months to a year, maybe a year and a half before you have your service up and running. What we offer is really easy, and it takes 30 days, maybe only a few weeks to get up and running. We’ve also developed technology that allows them to get a really easy start. They can start on mobile online, or mobile and web, and then develop other applications for Snap TV, Roku, and scale the service as they move forward. The other thing we do, is we’re very transparent about sharing data with them, like user data and advertising data. Someone, for instance, who goes to Amazon or puts their channel on Youtube won’t get any of that data. We present them with many advantages as they go on our platform.

What’s your background, and how did you get into this?

Kanaan Jemili: I have been in Southern California for more than 18 years. I had built an audio company before. In 2004 and 2005, I was at DivX in San Diego, and I was head of product there. I have a Ph.D. in signal processing, and I became CEO of DivX. We were a big company with licensing and so forth, and in 2015 we sold the company to NeuLion, a global streaming company whose customers included the NBA, NFL, Rogers, Univision, and so forth. Through that, I developed a thorough understanding of video streaming and video delivery, and after a year and a half started consulting about this big new initiative and became CEO earlier this year.

As someone who’d successfully made the transition from a Ph.D. to a CEO, which seems to be pretty rare, tell us about the experience?

Kanaan Jemili: Thanks for the question. When I finished my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in Signal Processing, two of my friends started the company in audio processing. For the first three years, it was all about research and development, building IP and patents and so forth. But, very quickly, within the second round of financing, we started doing more and more presentations to financial markets, and getting more fundraising, and so forth. At that time, after six or seven years, I started going to the business side, to really develop more of the skill set on not just how to do things, but why we should do things. How to justify the financial part of it. That was a big transition, at first, to try to create new products and services that are enjoyed by people. It turned out that media, entertainment, and digital media is a very good place to be. I was very attracted to digital video, and working with music labels, movie studios on different products, and then actually the executive part of my career. It was very helpful to have knowledge on both sides of the company, both the technology and business/M&A side. That gave me a rich experience of being a leader, and to gain leadership skills and on how to lead a company. I am still an engineer at heart, but I enjoy leading teams and companies, at this point. The entertainment and media space has been evolving over the last fifteen years, and it’s still just the beginning. It’s a very exciting time to be in this space.

Thanks for the interview!