A Year in Review – 2021

As we draw 2021 to a close and prepare to usher in 2022, I would like to reflect on the opportunities, challenges, learnings, and growth that team Hippo Video had over this past year. 

The last two years have been tough for many of us. We were confined to our living room or study for far too long. However, the economy is recovering, and things have started to look up ever since the rollout of the vaccines. But the fight is still on. We should not let our guard down, especially with a new strain like Omicron. Most importantly, we have to find ways to keep the business moving forward. 

Ever since there were restrictions on in-person interactions, people started looking for alternative forms of communication. Videos that were already popular grew more desirable after the pandemic. The lockdown accelerated the growth of videos. It has led to the significant adoption of asynchronous video communication. 

That said, at Hippo Video, we had one hell of an adventurous ride tackling challenges and diving into new opportunities. I want to take you through our journey through 2021- Ready?!

Challenges and Solutions

Videos that connect

As a video-first company, we knew our target audience wanted to keep their business going in the absence of social interaction. It was particularly applicable to sales teams. Sales is at the heart of any business, and building relationships with prospects cannot happen unless they meet and talk to prospects and customers. 

The challenge we faced was to convince enterprises that Hippo Video can help build and nurture trust and confidence among prospects. We put a lot of thought into embodying the personal connection while sending async videos. 

The solution – we amplified the personalization aspect of our videos. 

We made several portions of sales pages customizable, included fields inside videos that users can personalize. We provided merge fields, offered flexibility to add brand elements, and entirely white label the platform to ensure that prospects don’t feel the weight of the missing human connection. It helped us get across to our clients in a meaningful way. 

Simplified Video Creation

While videos were hailed on their part to make communication engaging and straightforward, the million-dollar question was how many teams were ready to start making videos right away? 

We had to tackle two different issues here –

1. Videos were timing-consuming to create

 2. Videos involved the speaker talking in front of the camera for a considerable amount of time without hesitation. 

Time for a brainstorming session again, and we came up with a practical and usable solution to mitigate this problem. 

We developed a template-builder that helped teams stitch up a sequence of clips or images together into one video. It eliminated the need to re-create new videos from scratch every time. 

It saved a ton of time for team leaders and team members. It reduced camera shyness significantly as it involved personalizing the videos by recording a couple of minutes of introduction, unlike speaking through the whole video. 

It provided the flexibility to trim and stitch areas that can be re-used, making video creation super easy. 

What did we do this year?

We did what we do best and helped our users create many videos! 😀

• No. of videos our users have created this year: 6,159,141
• No. of users so far: 153,167

We put together some great features for our product, and they proved super helpful in enhancing the video experience for all our users.

We had a couple of hospitality and e-commerce giants to our clientele (among 1176 others)!

We added  –

Single Sign-On (SSO) for Web and Mobile Apps – Sign in just once using the domain credentials registered with your identity provider. 

Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC) let users control how the team uses Hippo Video. Assigning permissions based on user profiles became simpler. 

Launched the MAC and Windows Desktop App that lets you record videos and custom screen sizes from anywhere – MacOS, Windows, iOS, and Android – through the native desktop app. 

Customizable Virtual Background that lets users set any image/video/screenshot as background for their videos. It was an effort to improve brand recall and increase personalization. 

We added more integrations with popular sales engagement tools such as Salesloft, Klenty, Salesforce Advanced, and many more.

Highlights of 2021

Hippo Video was named ‘Leader’ by G2 in four categories for the summer, Fall, and Winter 2021 report and even selected as one of G2’s Best Indian Software Sellers list for 2021!

We are proud to announce that we are now ISO 270001:13 certified. ISO 27001 is the international standard that is recognized globally for managing risks to the security of information. Certification to ISO 27001 allows us to prove to our clients and other stakeholders that we are managing the security of our clients’ information. ISO 27001:2013 provides a set of standardized requirements for an Information Security Management System (ISMS). 

Alongside, we had two brilliant minds join us on our advisory board – Mr. Sidharth Malik, CEO of Clever Top, Former CRO at Freshworks, and Guillaume Cabane, Co-Founder and VP @Hypergrowth. They have guided us with their business acumen throughout the year and will continue to help the business move forward. 

We partnered with Vengreso – the world’s largest digital sales training & technology organization that harnesses the power of video selling to help B2B sales teams exponentially engage better with clients, create more conversations with prospects. 

Events Galore

We were part of two important great events this year!

The AA-ISP –  The AA-ISP is a global community dedicated exclusively to advancing the profession of Virtual Sales. What is better than a virtual event doubling up as a stage to showcase the power of video communication in a virtual world? We were delighted to see thousands of enthusiastic sales professionals worldwide join the event. 

Read more about it here. 

We participated in an event called – Flip the Script (NA Tour). Five days in five iconic music venues, three intense pitch-offs, and heaps of networking – we sure hit all the right chords at this unconventional sales training roadshow – the proof is our winning team on the pitch-off _👇 amidst rousing cheers from the audience!

Ending with a sweet note

How could we forget the tradition? 

Like always, we have our stack of beautifully done Christmas and New Year greeting templates available for everyone to send video wishes to your near and dear ones. 

Check out our templates here. It’s free! 

Don’t forget to subscribe to our product newsletter if you’d like to know about our launches and new happenings at Hippo Video. 

See you on the other side! 

Wishing you all a very happy new year, 2022!