A Creator-First Platform

In 2019, Rizzle was conceptualised and co-founded by Vidya Narayanan and Lakshminath Dondetti to revolutionise the short-video app market, breaking the monotony of video-sharing apps and developing a creator-centric platform. Unlike other video apps in the market, Rizzle focuses on original, user-generated episodic content. For them, product-led growth with everyday creators is the key. The company has developed a distinct identity and brand for itself, and more importantly, for its creators. Before founding Rizzle, Narayanan had co-founded UrbanAMA: Ask Me Anything, a video AMA platform that hosted AMAs from government officials, NFL players, celebrated authors, among others. 

Prior to her entrepreneurial journey, she served as the Head of Qualcomm's context-aware research team, where she led the company into the field of context-aware computing. Subsequently, at Google, she built an always-on location and context team for Android that focused on bringing 24x7 context sensing and interpretation. Narayanan also championed Google's effort on building the dedicated context hub – hardware, running highly optimised algorithms for efficient sensing. Besides this, she also played an advisory role in building the context engine that powered the original Moto X.

Rizzle began with the vision of building a world-class short video platform that is inclusive, interactive, positive, and creator-first across categories such as comedy, drama, mystery and crime, action, romance, fantasy, science fiction and more. It is at the cutting-edge of driving innovation in short videos, with its engaging user interface, 1000+ templates, and AI-based features, such as Rimix, Filmi, Titan, and the recent Transition. These provide users with unique opportunities to create new content, especially music-based. “At Rizzle, we are committed to being a creator-first platform, democratising creation and monetisation experiences for everyday creators. Our camera is already levelling the playing field by allowing anyone with a smartphone to create great videos, without needing elaborate editing skills”, says Narayanan.   

With Rizzle Series and other unique media formats helping in strongly differentiating the product, over the next 18-24 months, Rizzle will grow beyond India and develop scale in the US and eventually in other markets as well.