How Apexnova runs 20+ OTT apps on ZeroBuffer
Apexnova builds and operates streaming apps for its clients. Paying three vendors for every one of them is why ZeroBuffer exists, and all 20+ of its apps now run on it.
- 20+
- OTT apps in production
- 1
- platform, from upload to playback
- 1
- rate in every market
Who this is about
Apexnova is our parent company. Apexnova Private Limited operates both Apexnova and ZeroBuffer, and the same team builds both. We're telling this story as our own history, not as an independent reference. Weigh it as proof that we run real production video on this platform every day, and that we're the first people affected when anything goes wrong.
The challenge
Twenty apps, paid for twenty times over.
Apexnova builds and runs streaming apps for its clients: subscription services and ad-supported ones, each with its own catalogue and audience. By the time the portfolio reached 20 apps, the video underneath them had become the hardest part of the business to run, and the most expensive.
Three vendors for every app
Preparing video for every screen was one bill, storing it was another, and getting it to viewers was a third. Multiply that by every client app, and a small team spent real time reconciling invoices instead of building apps.
Delivery was the largest line
For a streaming app, the cost of getting video to viewers dwarfs everything else on the invoice. Each new subscriber made that line longer, and no provider's pricing worked at the scale of 20 apps.
The price depended on the country
Apexnova's audiences are in South Asia and the Middle East, where many providers charge more to serve video than in North America. Their clients' most important markets were the most expensive ones to reach.
“We were running 20 apps for clients and paying for it 20 times over. No provider's pricing made sense at that scale, so we stopped waiting for one and built it.”
The decision
Build the platform we wanted to buy.
The team had shipped video on AWS for three years and watched the invoices climb, even as the real cost of moving video kept falling. Every provider they looked at priced the same problem the same way: separate meters for each step, and a delivery rate that changed with the country.
So instead of renting another piece of the pipeline, they built the whole of it: upload, encoding, storage, and streaming as one system, behind one rate in every country. That system became ZeroBuffer, and Apexnova was its first production workload.
How it runs today
Every app, one platform.
One pipeline from upload to playback
A client's catalogue is imported from wherever it lives, prepared in 4K, 1080p, 720p, and 480p with thumbnails, stored, and streamed, all in one place. Each title comes out the other end as one streaming link the apps already know how to play.
Every app, organised the same way
Each client app has its own collections, and team members get permissions for the apps they work on. Every catalogue is run with one set of habits instead of one per app.
One rate in every market
Every hour watched is billed at the same rate whether the viewer is in Mumbai or Dubai. A client launching in a new country doesn't change the unit cost of a subscriber.
What changed
One bill, one rate, one set of habits.
- One invoice instead of three per app. Preparing, storing, and streaming every client's catalogue is billed together, per GB watched.
- A unit cost that doesn't move with the map. A subscriber in a new market costs the same to serve as one at home, so a client's expansion is a business decision, not a pricing negotiation.
- No sales call to change anything. New apps go live on the same terms as the first, with no contract to reopen.
Apexnova has published its own account of the move on its blog: how Apexnova cut its streaming costs ↗.
Run your streaming app the same way.
Import a few titles and play them on your subscribers' devices, from where they live. No card, no contract, and no sales call.