Disrupting the media industry: Rohit Nagarajan

When Rohit Nagarajan became CEO of Vizrt in November 2024, something about the organization immediately struck him as unique. It wasn’t just the fact that the company is a technological disruptor, a media innovation leader and a tour de force when it comes to providing new solutions to drive viewer engagement.

No, as Nagarajan tells The CEO Magazine, it was the passion of its employees.

"Industry expertise, innovation, technology – these form the DNA of our people. And that makes us who we are in the sector," he says.

"That’s not something to be underestimated, because people make up the company and the genius behind it, be that the product team or our customer-facing teams, and how seriously customers take the trust that’s been placed in us, because we are as mission-critical as mission-critical gets."

Even after more than two decades in the tech space, working across fields, from foundational technology and database to security, middleware and applications, for industry giants such as SAP, SoftwareONE and Salesforce, Nagarajan has never experienced a company with employees as dedicated and determined as those at Vizrt.

As he explains, that passion extends to both its partners and customers as well.

"I have never found an organization where I’ve seen customers more invested and wanting us to be successful alongside them," he reveals.

"And that’s because they see how much of a pivotal role we play in the day-to-day operations and how invested we are in their success. Where we end and where the customer begins is a very blurry line and that’s great.

"We are part of running their operations, and that way we keep that innovation flywheel running, we grow with them and they look at us as true partners as they expand their business."

Another highlight for Nagarajan was speaking with the enormous ecosystem of partners who ultimately help make what the company produces a reality for its end customers.

As an incoming CEO, he had no shortage of open, honest feedback on what was going well and what could be improved.

Changing landscape

When Vizrt was created 25 years ago, the company had its roots in broadcast media, where the experience and engagement were based around ensuring the stories that newsmakers told were enriched with digestible graphics to hold the attention of viewers. However, with stories and videos now being both told and consumed in an entirely new way, and with the advent of AI and agentic capabilities, media providers need to stay abreast of these trends and transformations.

"As broadcast has developed over these past several decades, viewers are obviously spoiled for choice, and the amount of information being thrown at them has grown exponentially," Nagarajan explains.

"That viewer experience is something we’ve thrived in, in the broadcast space and the sports space. From the NFL to the Winter Games, we’ve played a pivotal part in the transmission of the story being told in sport, using analysis, augmented reality and analytics, meaning viewers are more engrossed in the data behind the sports and elections.

"We’ve been part of every major election for the past two-and-a-half decades across the world. Turn on the TV, open TikTok, Facebook Live or whatever it might be, as long as you’re consuming content that has graphics in it, everything except the moving pictures is what we do."

For a company moving at the speed of light within an industry whose requirements and parameters shift daily or even hourly, Vizrt has to be agile and adaptable, always staying one step ahead.

"I genuinely feel that no industry has as short a window between a disruptive factor coming in to being disruptive. Look at how long it took for social media to take over as a primary form of viewership from broadcasters. It was months and years, not decades," Nagarajan explains.

"When you look at how mobility played a role in the second screen becoming prominent as opposed to a primary screen, that struck the window of disruption even more. And now with AI, the area where it has a substantial impact is again telling authentic stories so that customers know the truth from fiction, and that impacts all of our customers."

Innovative solutions

By continuing to evolve to suit the changing landscape of how video content is distributed and consumed, Vizrt is able to offer customers – both large organizations and individual content creators – innovative solutions for visually compelling storytelling.

"We are uniquely positioned, being entirely software-defined and cloud-first," Nagarajan points out.

"Every capability that we are offering a content creator for a short or long-form platform like Zoom, YouTube or TikTok, is built on the same platform that we are building for broadcasters; the reason we’re able to stretch that platform across is the software nativity and the cloud nativity."

In broadcast media, because of the nature of the content, the fact that so many organizations are operating 24/7 and the sophisticated nature of the video capture equipment they use, it is a particularly high-risk setting.

And yet, as Nagarajan explains, Vizrt is also able to deliver the same program in a cloud-native model for enterprise audiences like corporate communications with a simplified user interface and AI functionality, allowing them to skip some of the more complex steps in the workflow.

"That’s how we’re taking the same portfolio into any segment, wherever live content is being produced. It also serves us because we’re then able to take the same innovation to market," he says.

"We’re not compromising innovation for the broadcaster by focusing on the content creator, and we’re not compromising for the content creator by focusing on the broadcast, because eventually, it will always be about transforming viewer experiences and engagement."

New partners, new mediums

Partnering with clients such as global video forum Zoom, Vizrt recently launched InteractifAI and CaptivAIte, designed to bring broadcast-quality graphics and storytelling capabilities to fresh mediums such as virtual meetings and events.

"We both have a shared belief that every meeting room is a studio; they just don’t know it yet," Nagarajan says with a smile.

"Between the Zoom technology they have and our immersive graphics capability around augmented reality (AR), extended reality and HTML5 graphics, that allows us to convert every meeting room into an experience center, where a conversation and a presentation goes from people sat around an oval table opening up a slide to having AR graphics, and even ‘teleport’ remote presenters into the room.

"This is what will be transformative for corporates that want to amplify viewer engagement."

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According to Nagarajan, over the next few years, the company is scaling its managed services to take on more of the operational burden for its customers, allowing them to focus on content creation instead.

"For me, the thesis has always been when the name on the tin is ‘Vizrt’, it’s our problem, right?" he explains. "The managed services that we offer are a set of distinct services in conjunction with partners. We have intentionally moved from delivering a product to delivering an outcome."

Vizrt now gives the option of a corporate studio as a service.

"All you have to worry about is the story that you’re looking to tell, and let us help you tell the story best," he adds.

"If you have the skills in-house, we’re absolutely happy to land the platform in there, train you and enable you to be able to deliver it. But in our goal of trying to access the largest set of customers possible, we want to give the choice of delivering these ourselves as a managed service."

Customer first

Nagarajan’s leadership approach emphasizes customer-centricity, driving speed and accountability and fostering a ‘one team’ mentality across the organization. And above all else, he believes in the power of keeping the client at the center of everything.

"It’s about truly understanding what matters for the customer," he enthuses. "What matters for our viewers is the experience; they don’t care about the millions of lines of code we have behind it, and they don’t care about the AI that creates a rundown of what comes next. All they care about is how the graphics look on-screen.

"Knowing what matters to the true end customer needs to be your guiding north star and the trends that impact that."

With three key principles directing his approach to organizational excellence and a plethora of exciting projects, partnerships and developments in the works, Nagarajan is anticipating the next chapter of Vizrt to be better than ever before.

"The first is speed matters. The second is keeping the promise. And the last one is winning together, which means running as one," he reflects.

"Trying your hardest to make sure there’s harmony across the various tracks that you’re trying to drive is essential. I always tell teams, ‘We win together or we lose together, and I have no intention of losing, so let’s run as one.’"