Cinemacraft, a US-based company that recently started operations in India has raised $775,000 from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation and fashion icon Tyra Banks. Its Videogram service, that converts videos into a tiled interface with all the keyframes, will now be integrated into smart TVs. The company was founded in June 2012 with seed investment from 500Startups and angels. The company had raised $1.5M from NTT DoCoMo, 500Startups, & Turner Media Camp in July 2013. Including the current round, it has raised a total of $3 million till now. The company has offices in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Seoul, and Mumbai. [caption id="attachment_107187" align="aligncenter" width="495"] A mock up of Videogram interface on a smart TV.[/caption] Cinemacraft claims that Videogram almost doubles the engagement on videos and had tied up with CBS to promote four new comedies they launched — The Crazy Ones, ‘Mom,’ ‘We Are Men’ and ‘The Millers’. In India it has partnership with Yash Raj and Videograms were used during the promotion of Dhoom 3, especially on Twitter. In US, it has tie-up with Sony Pictures Entertainment, 21st Century Fox, Disney, Turner, Bravo and Universal Music Group. It also has an app for iOS and Android that lets you create your own Videograms. Monetisation strategy: Videogram helps content companies and advertisers monetise using the tiled interface on their existing video platforms. The technology doesn’t disrupt any existing pre-roll or banner ads that are overlaid on top of the video player. Some of the tiles in a video can be replaced by an ad which can then be monetised using CPI, CPC…
