Ukrainian startup Restream has attracted $50 million from U.S. investment firms Sapphire Ventures and Insight Partners to speed up the growth of its video streaming business.
This investment round brings the total amount of Restream’s investment money to about $54.5 million, according to public records.
Already a profitable business with heavyweight clients like Microsoft, Activision, Wargaming and Ubisoft, the startup allows its clients to broadcast live concerts, online meetings, sports and video game matches to different online platforms simultaneously.
That service is so in demand among internet users that, in 2018, the company’s market value hit $17.8 million.
Restream is not disclosing its valuation with the new round. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world and people started spending even more time online, its profits increased tremendously, Restream cofounder Alexander Khuda said in the company’s statement.
According to its website, every month Restream broadcasts over eight million videos to viewers around the world. And as international borders remain closed and restrictive quarantine measures are still in force, Restream keeps growing.
Over the last eight months, the team of 50 people has worked its fingers to the bone to provide services to its two million clients, Khuda said in an interview with U.S. tech news website TechCrunch. As a result, the company has grown by 300% since January 2020.
People use Restream to broadcast their livestreams across 30 social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. In fact, LinkedIn itself has partnered with Restream to broadcast its events and conferences on streaming services Wirecast, Switcher Studio and Socialive.
Many clients of Restream use only the free features of the platform, but those who need to record videos, have their own logos on them and stream them to public pages on Facebook, subscribe and pay $19–49 per month. The paid customers can also analyze streaming data and send text messages to the audience in real time.
Founded in 2015 in Vinnytsia, some 260 kilometers southwest of Kyiv, Restream has been profitable nearly from the very start. Khuda claims it’s because Restream focused primarily on video game streaming, a growing industry driven by the increasing popularity of esports.
Ukraine-born video streaming startup Restream raised $50 million from U.S. investment firms Sapphire Ventures and Insight Partners to speed up the growth of its business. In 2018, the company’s market value hit $17.8 million, but since January 2020 the company has grown by 300%, because its services are on demand. (Andrew Surzhynskyi)
In 2019, global esports revenues surpassed $1 billion and are expected to reach $2.3 billion by 2021, according to research by U.K. video game retailer Green Man Gaming. In the first quarter of 2018, esports viewers spent 17.9 million hours watching video games on different online platforms, including YouTube and Twitch.
Twitch, one of the most popular video game streaming services, was bought by Amazon for nearly $1 billion back in 2014. The all-time most watched game on Twitch, League of Legends, got 29 million views as of April 2020. According to various estimates, Twitch’s viewership numbers far exceeds popular media like MSNBC and CNN.
Now, Restream is also among those to whom the industry is paying close attention. Among the Ukrainian startup’s other big-name investors are American firms Anorak Ventures, Silverton Partners and Liquid2.
“Restream is one of the most active startups giving back to its home country!” said one of the startup’s investors, Ragnar Sass, founder of coworking Lift99 that operates in Estonia and Ukraine.
Restream’s legal entity is registered in Austin, United States, but its main development office — Khuda calls it the “tech heart” of the startup — is based in Kyiv.
