Vochi’s video editing app for content creators raises $1.5m

11 May 2020

Image: © kegfire/Stock.adobe.com

Vochi is aiming to capitalise on the TikTok boom with its video editing app, as creators seek new ways to edit social media content.

Belarusian start-up Vochi has raised $1.5m in seed funding for its video editing platform aimed at users of social media sites such as TikTok and Instagram. The funding round was led by Ukrainian venture capital firm Genesis Investments.

The start-up’s app helps users to apply effects on single objects in videos in real time. According to Vochi, the average motion designer spends around four hours to add glitch on a single object in a 15-second video, which the Vochi app can do in about 15 seconds.

The app was launched in November 2019 with pre-seed investment from Belarus-based Bulba Ventures, which backs machine learning start-ups.

Vochi’s technology

The start-up said that its technology is not “about applying a layer with effects over the users’ content”, but rather about “interacting with the world a user shows in a video”. Users can highlight a particular part of a scene, play with different objects or apply different effects to “enhance the perception of the scene”.

Using two trained convolutional neural networks (CNN), Vochi performs semi-supervised video object segmentation and instance segmentation, creating a computer vision-based video editing tool for content creators.

The start-up has also developed a custom rendering engine for video effects that enables instant application in 1080p on mobile devices. The app is available on both iOS and Android.

The market

Vochi said that video content is booming. In particular, TikTok has 500m monthly active users around the world, who are constantly seeking new ways to create videos that will help them to “stand out from the crowd”, according to the start-up.

Commenting on the investment, Vochi CEO Ilya Lesun said: “Becoming partners of such an experienced team as Genesis opens great and exciting opportunities.

“This partnership will help us grow Vochi as a global product, building a strong monetisation model and implementing new, impressive features.”

Vitaliy Laptenok, CEO of Genesis Investments, added: “We are excited to work with such extraordinary founders to help them build a new tool to make self-expression through video easier. Their deep technical expertise coupled with our digital marketing experience will help Vochi achieve extraordinary results and disrupt the global video editing industry.”

Kelly Earley was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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