Sandeep Casi has worked on virtual reality for General Motors, conducted research at the Fuji Xerox Lab in Palo Alto, holds two patents, and is now working on his mobile video startup, Cinemacraft.We grabbed him for a quick interview to pick his brains on what Cinemacraft does and to get his views on Asia’s rapidly evolving mobile space.
Cinemacraft won an award from TIE recently. Tell us more about what Cinemacraft does, and what was it like winning that award?
Cinemacraft is creating a ‘Interactive Media Broadcast Cloud’ for mobile devices. We enable third parties to develop applications and services for mobile devices using our cloud (Transcoder, Cloud, AR engine, Game engine, etc). Our platform (API & Tools) enables media to be distributed and consumed interactively.
Cinemacraft also holds content rights (anime, music, movies) and we will enable the third-parties to sub-license the content along with our Broadcast Cloud to deploy interactive applications to market.
So for example: An entrepreneur can use our cloud (API, Tools, Content) to deploy an anime game or interactive movie app on mobile devices (2.5G, 3G, 4G, WiFi). Cinemacraft may choose to fund such entrepreneurs on a case by case basis. Cinemacraft will also selectively release our own mobile apps to market and we are currently in stealth on two such ‘Hyper Video Apps’.
What’s your background? Is Cinemacraft based in Singapore now? Why Singapore?
I have been in media for 20 years. I started off as a 20-year-old at General Motors working on virtual reality for crash analysis and then moved to Industrial Light+Magic in San Francisco and ended up in Japan with Fujifilm/Fuji Xerox via Fuji Xerox Palo Alto Lab in Silicon Valley.
I started my career as a programmer for GM, and then as Manager at ILM , but my true calling came when I started work on Interactive Media Research at Fuji Xerox Palo Alto Lab, which enabled me to move cutting-edge interactive media research to products via Fuji Xerox and Fujifilm in Japan. This also exposed me to look at the Asian markets as an opportunity that is about to explode.
I decided back in 2007 that it was worth moving lock, stock and barrel from San Francisco to Tokyo and focus on the emerging Asia markets. I worked for a boutique venture capital firm as a director in Tokyo from 2007 to 2010 that was focused on media startups from the Valley moving into the Japanese market.
This was so that I could learn the ropes and also to get exposure to Asian way of business. Meanwhile, mobile devices in Asia started exploding into market. I decided in early 2010 that this was time for me to step up to the plate and start Cinemacraft.
What are some of the macro trends you see in mobile business models in Asia? Where does Cinemacraft fit in?
Unfortunately, the telecom operators in Asia are too restrictive and frankly have no clue or just plain greedy. This has culminated in most of the mobile startups in Asia to focus on serving western markets instead of the Asian markets — with some exceptions, like Mig33.
I think with the coming explosion of smart phones (which is mostly Android, unless Apple comes up with a low-end iOS device) into the market, we will start to see a trend where the operators will have no option but to cede control of the app ecosystem. Case in point: Japan was notorious in terms of having a closed mobile business model ecosystem (iMode, etc). However, with the smart phone explosion, the DoCoMo ecosystem (iMode), for example, is moot. The Japanese market is now not only open for non-Japanese companies, but also for the domestic mobile companies. These companies today can come create business models that suits the consumers and not the telco.
Hear more of Sandeep’s views at Echelon 2011 where he will join a panel to discuss Asia’s evolving mobile business models together with Saumil Nanvati of Chalkboard and several others.
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