“Demand for vernacular content growing multi-fold with onboarding of Bharat”

Founded in 2021 by Varshul CW and Anuja Dhawan, Dubverse is the first ever AI-powered SaaS video content dubbing and creation platform which supports end-to-end dubbing and produces ready-to-publish videos in real-time. The self-service platform allows full control to the users to create, review and share the dubbed files. The company aims to break the language barrier by broadcasting speeches from the global leaders at the United Nations or Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Mann Ki Baat’ real-time in all languages and dialects of India and the World. With its first of its kind product, Dubverse is committed to make the Internet a more inclusive place by simplifying technology that is accessible to all and enabling each and every creator to experience the power of AI.

Recently, Dubverse.ai raised $800K in seed funding, led by global funds including Kalaari Capital. Dubverse plans to use the funds to construct a creative tool and has thus chosen creator angels (Supriya Paul of Josh Talks, Jasminder Singh Gulati Ex-Founder of Now Floats and Sairee Chahal, Founder of Sheroes and others), who produce a lot of material in India’s vernacular market as well as internationally.

In conversation with Adgully, Anuja Dhawan, Co-Founder, Dubverse, speaks at length about how Dubverse aims to break the language barrier, support end-to-end dubbing, produce ready-to-publish videos in real-time, and more.

What does this seed funding mean for Dubverse? How are you going to expand and scale your operations and reach?

This seed fund will be the enabler to make our AI more efficient and contextual across languages, we will primarily be focusing on building the product along with our initial users. We aim to reach 10k users this year, and make the multilingual journey simpler and easier for creators across the board – from Indie to brands to agencies, etc.

Further, the company aims to break the language barrier by broadcasting speeches from the global leaders at the United Nations or ‘Mann Ki Baat’ from Prime Minister Narendra Modi real-time in all languages and dialects of India and the World. With its first of its kind product, Dubverse is committed to make the Internet a more inclusive place by simplifying technology that is accessible to all and enabling each and every creator to experience the power of AI.

Could you give us an idea about your end-to-end dubbing and ready-to-publish video offerings?

Dubverse is the first ever platform which supports end-to-end dubbing and produces ready-to-publish videos in real-time. The self-service platform allows full control to the users to create, review and share the dubbed files. With the Dubverse platform, creators can get dubbed output in real-time. It is as simple as giving an input either by uploading the video or giving a YouTube link, choosing the language and speaker you like from the wide variety we have. In no time, dubbed output is produced. We give full control to the user to make edits from our advanced script editor to match their tonality and brand, apply changes and the ready-to-publish video is what they get. We want to make this simplest possible, hence we like to say “We Canva-d video Dubbing”.

Have you associated with any production houses or streaming platforms in India or do you plan such associations in the future?

Not as of now, for now we are building our product, making it more robust to take in as many use-cases as possible, but we definitely plan to do this as the next step.

What are your marketing and promotional activities? Do you plan to foray into international markets?

Our organic reach has given us a headstart, we leverage close communities, which gives us a more personalised touch and we have a close feedback loop with the users. This is definitely a global product, and we have been thinking on those lines from day one; for that matter, our Spanish to English translations are 99% accurate and we already have global users on our platform.

How do you associate with marketers, agencies, etc.? Do you plan to have any unique associations with them?

Agencies create the maximum content, we have initiated a few and we plan to go big on partnerships with agencies and add a feature in their offerings to the end customers. Marketers are loving our platform for the sheer value it delivers for them, they are able to increase their addressable market multi-fold at a click of a button, what more can a marketer can wish for?

What are the trends that you are foreseeing in the dubbing and video production fields in the times ahead? How will areas like AI, VR, AR, Metaverse, etc., influence the domain?

With Bharat coming on to the Internet and adding to the content economy, we only see the demand for vernacular content growing multi-fold. We see the early trends in the market, where brands such as Josh Talks, Smallcase have already started targeting all vernacular languages. We see Cinema also follow the same trend, where no big production house movie is produced in a single language now. These make our belief stronger to go deeper in the vernacular market.

Technology will have an even bigger role to play in content creation going forward, where any content type audio, video, text will be created using tech which will be scalable, cost effective and with quick turnaround.