A chat about an AI bot that fetches movies you love from all over the web

Cocktail. Photo credit: HD wallpapers.

[Scene I]: The weekend

Arun and Riya are looking forward to a weekend of watching movies with friends after a hectic week at work. Soon their friends, Dilip, Samaira, and Mitali turn up. Drinks and snacks are served, and they settle down on sofas in the sitting room.

Dilip: So, have you guys decided on the movie yet?

Riya: Just the thought of finding a movie is such a pain.

Arun: Seriously! We live with technology all around, and yet searching for movies is so antiquated. You google for something, hunt for hours on websites, and end up with a dud!

Samaira: Hey, guess what, we found this website called Flickstree.

Riya: Oh, no! Not another movie website. There are zillions of them, and we still can never find the movie we want!

Mitali: But why bother so much, just download from a torrent site – it’s so simple!

Dilip: Are you nuts, Mita? Torrent sites are illegal in India, you can land up in jail for up to three years, and even be fined for up to 3 lakhs – why risk that?

Mitali: Oh! That’s crazy! I mean, I had heard about the illegality, vaguely, but never took it seriously. So, is Flickstree legal? How does it work?

Samaira: It’s a new startup. And they want to make it easier for you to find movies streamed on various sites. Like, for example, if Neerja is available on Hotstar, if you click on Neerja on Flickstree, you will be taken to the Hotstar site to watch the movie.

Dilip: Basically, Flickstree rounds up movies from Netflix, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play Movies, Spuul, and so on.

Mitali: But why would any movie streaming company want to share space with its rival companies on Flickstree? Hotstar, for example, may not want to be sitting side-by-side with, say, Netflix, isn’t it?

Dilip: It’s because no business can afford not to be on the platform once it has enough users. Like huge brands selling through Amazon.

Samaira (nodding in agreement): Yeah. If, for example, Flickstree removes Hotstar, and Neerja is available on Netflix, then Hotstar would lose out, right?

Dilip: They have about 20 sites on board which stream movies.

Arun: So, is it free? Or do they charge users to get access?

Samaira: Flickstree is free. But, of course, the movie websites and services you get access to have a mixed bag of pay-per-view, subscription-based, and free movies.

Mitali: But even on Flickstree you’ll have to scroll through zillions of movies to find one, isn’t it? Unless you know of a movie, I mean.

Samaira: So here’s the fun part! Flickstree has a self-learning AI bot, so the more you use it, the smarter it gets at recommending movies according to your choices.

Arun: But, Google is pretty smart too – so what’s the difference between finding something on Google and Flickstree?

Dilip: On Google you need to know the movie you want before searching for it, or else you end up searching for top 20 movies of various genres.

Samaira: Plus, the next time you search on Google, you get the same results, so, the system hasn’t learned anything. On Flickstree, you pick your genre, era, or favorite actors, and also rate the movies you like, or dislike, and based on all that, its AI bot will throw up movie recommendations personalized for you.

Dilip: When you open the Flickstree website for the first time, after you sign up, you go through four or five steps where you’ll be asked to tell them a bit about yourself and your likes.

Samaira: That’s to build your movie profile on the website.

Arun: Sounds useful. I hate being stuck with the same stale movie lists most sites give me.

Riya: I guess those sites give choices based on what most users watch, so you usually end up with stuff that you detest or have already seen.

Arun: And our Netflix’s algorithm got totally messed up ever since we began getting kid’s movies for Kunal on it.

Riya: But I am so moody about my movie choices. You know, sometimes I feel in the classics mood, other times I want current hits.

Dilip: Flickstree has thought of that. You have the option to pick several genres, and you can change your settings whenever you want.

Arun: But, hang on, won’t the Flickstree algorithm get confused if I change preferences?

Samaira: It’s a self-learning engine, so it makes a dynamic user profile, constantly adapting to your inputs. But, of course, artificial intelligence isn’t perfect! Yet!

Mitali: So they only have a website? No app? I mean, I like watching movies on the go on my phone, sometimes.

Dilip: They’ve got an Android app. The iOS app will be available soon, they say.

Riya: What about Indian regional language movies – Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Odiya…?

Samaira: Not at present. Now you get only English and Hindi movies via Flickstree. Hollywood and Bollywood.

Dilip: But Sam, aren’t you going to tell them about our encounter with Flyk bot?

Samaira (smiles at her husband, then turns to the others): Well, Flickstree has an AI chatbot on Facebook Messenger to interact with movie buffs.

Dilip: Ever since Zuck announced they would support AI bots in Facebook Messenger, everyone is hopping on the bandwagon.

Riya: And why not? Arun and I were reading the other day that there are 195 million Indians using Facebook.

Dilip: So anyway, here’s the encounter we had with Flickstree’s chatbot. We wanted to kind of bowl Flyk bot a googly, just to check out how smart it was. So I asked, ‘Hi, I’m looking for lesser known Gregory Peck movies.’

Arun (laughing aloud): You always did love your oldies and googlies, so what reply did you get?

Samaira: The bot replied: ‘Hi! I am Flyk Bot, your guide to great movies. I will help you find films you’d love to watch. Not just that, I will also tell you where you can watch these films online… Processing… Please don’t type anything!’

Dilip: It didn’t take too long, and it gave me a bunch of Gregory Peck movies, most of which I had seen, of course.

Samaira: But, he did get one that he hadn’t seen. He was so thrilled.

Dilip: Yeah, it’s a 1964 movie named Behold A Pale Horse, and it has Anthony Quinn and Omar Sharif, besides Peck – I was totally floored!

Samaira: We were so impressed that we gave a thumbs-up to Flyk bot, but it replied: “Sorry I can only process text messages for now.”

(All laugh)

[All five are fictional characters.]

[Scene II] – Meet the production team

(From right to left) Rahul Jain, Saurabh Singh, and Nagender Sangra. Photo credit: Flickstree.

Flickstree’s founders are Saurabh Singh, Rahul Jain, and Nagender Sangra.

Rahul comes from a business family in Dehradun, which has been running a pharmaceutical company for 100 years.

“I was the only one who was good in studies. Typically, in business families, people don’t study much, because they know that all they need to do is graduate and then join the family business,” explains Rahul.

I really liked the entire situation with the chaos around, no structure, and no process to follow/

But since he was coming first in class regularly in school, he got encouragement from both his parents to continue with studies.

As was usual in the 2000’s, when Rahul passed out of school, the only career options he had were in either medicine or engineering – he chose the latter. But while doing his engineering at Govind Ballabh Pant Krishi Evam Praudyogik Vishwavidyalaya, Haldwani, Uttarakhand, he realized that it was not his cup of tea.

He followed it up with an MBA at MICA, an academic institution for marketing and communication skills. His final year dissertation was on the Indian film industry.

“I have to do something on my own,” he always thought. So, after MBA, he chose to work with startups. “I really liked the entire situation with the chaos around, no structure, and no process to follow,” he says.

The whole experience of creating a product from inception to struggling for users excited him. But one of the companies where he was a co-founder folded up after a three-year stint, whereupon Rahul had to join Asian Paints, where he became the media and digital head.

“I was fortunate enough to actually see how a two-billion-dollar company functions,” he says. And that’s also where Rahul and Saurabh connected. Both, being movie buffs, would meet on Monday mornings and gripe about their movie watching experiences over the weekend.

“When I got to know him, I realized that ever since his college days, he wanted to do something on his own, too,” says Rahul. But leaving a corporate job with a secure monthly salary, after a 11-year stint, was a difficult decision to make. However, Saurabh also realized that if he didn’t get out at that time, it would get even harder because his salary would keep increasing.

But even at the medical college he was more interested in coding.

They had an idea around movie discovery. While discussing their way forward, they knew machine learning was integral for what they had in mind. “Both of us were not coders, so we thought we needed a third partner who had to be a tech geek, who would create the product.” That’s when Rahul decided to have a word with his relative Nagender, who has 15 years of programming experience, which includes machine learning and AI.

Nagender is actually a qualified doctor, having done bachelor’s in medicine and surgery (MBBS), from Maharshi Dayanand University. But even at the medical college he was more interested in coding. Hence, he chose not to practice medicine at all. He became a professional coder.

When Rahul shared his idea with him, Nagender was enthusiastic, since he too was a movie buff. Thus all three got together and created Flickstree.

Flickstree, now with 15,000 registered users, is in beta. The startup is bootstrapped, but is looking for seed funding. “All our savings have gone into reaching this point.”

It has tied up with Amazon and iTunes. So every time a user goes from Flickstree and buys a movie from those sites, it gets a commission. This is its secondary form of monetization. Primarily, it makes money from advertising by movie production houses and other content marketing players, like television entertainment channels.

I googled around and found Flixfindr, CanIStream.it, and Watchi.ly, which are on the same track as Flickstree, but none of these are based in India. When I asked Rahul what differentiates Flickstree from them, he replied: “These websites are mostly in the business of aggregation. We offer personalized recommendations which are powered by AI and machine learning. Besides, none of them have Indian movie streaming players.”

I think the main challenge Flickstree will face is weaning people away from subscription sites like Netflix, which have huge libraries of movies, where subscribers stay hooked. Besides, the user experience has to match what people have got used to on sleek streaming sites.

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