RS Raghavan, CEO and Co-Founder of Animaker, joins the podcast to share how his passion for visual storytelling inspired a platform that makes video creation as easy as building a PowerPoint.
RS explains how Animaker has evolved from a simple editing tool into an AI-powered platform that lets anyone generate videos from text prompts, turning what once took weeks into minutes. He discusses how marketers use video to boost engagement across sales, training, and social media, and why storytelling remains the key to standing out.
He also touches on the importance of brand consistency, creativity, and continuous learning, offering practical insights for marketers looking to harness the power of video in a fast-changing digital landscape.
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About Animaker
Animaker is one of the world’s leading AI-powered creative platforms that helps businesses build studio-quality videos in minutes. From L&D professionals & trainers, marketers to educators, entrepreneurs and enterprises, anyone can simplify video creation and marketing at scale with Animaker and its suite of AI tools. Serving over 30Million users worldwide, Animaker’s AI suite includes Steve AI, Vmaker AI, Show (AI Marketers), and Picmaker that enables organizations to harness AI for smarter storytelling, faster content productions, and stronger customer engagement.
About RS Raghavan
RS Raghavan is the CEO & Co Founder of Animaker Inc, a leading double AI patented SaaS startup in the visual content creation space with over 30M + users.
With a background in technology and a passion for creativity, Raghav has helped numerous Fortune companies run successful marketing & video campaigns and L&D training sessions. He strongly believes creativity can solve big problems and has delivered keynote talks at top conferences worldwide. RS has received several accolades, including the CII Startupreneur Award and Tech Entrepreneur of the Year He is also involved in initiatives like Say No to Cancer and Education for All.
Time Stamps
00:00:18 – Meet RS, CEO and Co-Founder of Animaker
00:03:06 – Creating Videos with Animaker
00:04:44 – Simplifying Video Production
00:07:38 – Standing Out in a Crowded Video Space
00:12:50 – Video’s Role in the Sales Process
00:16:02 – Design Teams vs. DIY Video Creation
00:18:50 – Future Trends in Video Marketing
00:21:13 – Final Thoughts and Marketing Advice
Quotes
“Standing out comes from the story. You can literally have the same character, same background, same all of it. But still, you want to create the engagement that comes from the story.” RS Raghavan, CEO and Co-Founder of Animaker.
“If you’re doing a product launch, have a nice video to it. There is no excuse of not having a video to any of your product launches in the initial days.” RS Raghavan, CEO and Co-Founder of Animaker.
“Marketing starts before even your product development starts. The moment a feature or something we have developed, the first thing goes in my mind is like, how come the customer is going to receive it?” RS Raghavan, CEO and Co-Founder of Animaker.
Follow RS:
RS Raghavan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsraghavan/
Animaker website: https://www.animaker.com/
Animaker on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/animaker/
Follow Mike:
Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/
Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/
Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/
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Transcript: Interview with RS Raghavan at Animaker
Speakers: Mike Maynard, RS Raghavan
Mike: Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today. Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. I’m joined by Rago, who is the CEO and founder of Animaker. Welcome to the podcast, Rago.
RS: Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me here. I’m pretty excited to have this session.
Mike: And I’m really excited to talk to you. You’ve got a really cool tool that you’ve developed. But we’d like to start by finding a little bit out about you. So can you tell us a little bit about your career and why you chose to found Animaker?
RS: I would say I was a very, very accidental entrepreneur. I was not in the world of getting into business or something like that. When I started, I wanted to become a scientist. It was really strange when I say that people, I mean, some of my friends laugh at me, like, really? But that’s always in the back of my mind. Oh, I’ll like this. being in a chemistry lab. I don’t know, that’s an illusion I already had. Oh, being in a chemistry lab, do something experimental, come out something like this, like the EZA projects and stuff like that. I was always excited of taking a big problem and solving it. But I never thought that being an entrepreneur or being in business is the best way to do it because you have enough funds to do it, you have enough people to join your mission to do it. I think anyone in 2025 want to do in a big time, even in the research space. I do have a lot of researchers as my friends. We always say like being an entrepreneur is the easiest way to do any of the big things you are imagined of. But with that said, but when you started, obviously you don’t know any of this. Right, you have no clue how your life is going to unfold. You are actually connecting backwards, the dots in the backwards. So when I started, I used to go to these demo days and hackathons and these project showcase. I used to show my science projects. So whenever I go and show these science projects, people get super excited and appreciate my presentation, my videos more than my science. I was like, oh my god, Raghav, this is an amazing video. This is amazing animation. Okay, did you get something about my science? No. So it just repeatedly happened to me. Then I slowly started realizing, oh my god, actually, I’m good at this videos and visual presentation more than my science. That self-realization, it took a while. want to do something in the video and visual space then we started this video production house as a side hustle and then slowly thought okay we want to give a powerpoint kind of experience to build animaker then that now turns into can we give a chat vpt kind of experience for video making now we are here with that animaker has grown from a simple powerpoint kind of experience to now Just prompt, you’ll get a video and you’re good with it.
Mike: So that’s a great description. You give it a prompt and you get a video. I mean, can you expand a bit on that and talk a little bit about, you know, particularly what sort of videos people create using it?
RS: Oh yeah, I mean, to be honest, Animaker is like all sort of tool. But if you ask us, like, where do we really optimize and focus? Because end of the day, Animaker is like a PowerPoint. What can I do with the PowerPoint? You can do anything with it. You can do sales demos, you can do this exactly same in Animaker as well. If you are a marketer, marketers are a bigger segment. They create extended videos, training videos, social media, short reels, anything on the communication, anything people don’t want to share textual content, they use our tool to simply add those conversations and script and generate a nice video and share it across. tired of reading anything now, nowadays. So that’s sort of a big segment. And another big segment is L&D and training people, like a sales enablement, creating video courses, or even some really good internal communication. So for example, I was talking to one of my friends, he said like, oh, if it’s mail from a CEO comes, I just archive it. No, that’s what it’s like. Nobody’s reading CEO’s email. If it is a small company, people take it seriously. What is a big organization? How can we really engage those internal communications pretty strong? Do a video. Have an avatar of a CEO. Even if he is busy, that’s okay. Pull him in. Give a nice script. Whatever he wants to talk, the same email. Let it generate a video and send. And a lot of people have now started doing it, which is pretty awesome, I would say. There are a lot of use cases like this.
Mike: So, I mean, historically, the problem has been that creating these sort of videos has taken a lot of time, required specialist equipment. I mean, presumably what you’re trying to do at Animaker is actually reduce that complexity and make it really simple to produce a video. So how simple can it be to actually produce a video?
RS: I still remember when I started, it took four to five weeks to create a video, one video, and it’s nearly $40,000-$50,000. It is a $40,000-$50,000, but on the other hand, it is just one video. You make it and you post it everywhere for the next one year and you survive with it. The lifetime of a video got so less. It’s just a scrawl away. When you post it, people are just going to spend like 10 seconds on it. And that’s the expectation in terms of creation is also now translated. I would say those 4-5 weeks brought down to 4-5 days in a DIY era. That 4-5 days in Animaker when we started it becomes 4-5 hours. Now it is just 4-5 minutes. If you have a nice script, you feed it, two minutes, you will have everything, two minutes for you to edit, improve here and there. Five minutes you can do with your video. But it’s a creative space. Even you can modify it for hours. I mean, it’s not going to stop you from improving it, but the minimal successful video, now you can make it in just four or five minutes. And by the way, when I say minimal, I always say, when you are a first time video creator, a lot of things go wrong, which these AI engines are taking care of. So simple thing is like having a light background, having a light colored text that nobody can read it. AI is going to take care of it. It’s not going to create a Super Bowl kind of ad for sure, but it’s going to create really, really basic high quality video, which you can survey with.
Mike: And so do you see video kind of replacing email to some extent in terms of pushing marketing messages out?
RS: It will increase the engagement, I would say. Email is email still. I mean, I always believe no channel will replace another channel. It’s like an add-on. Now the communications are more, the touchpoints are more. For marketers, we need to have multiple touchpoints. I always tell them, like, yeah, if you’re sending like five, ten emails, maybe send a couple of emails with videos attached to it. couple of emails with gifs attached to it. Yeah, couple of emails like a simple conversation, like two, three lines of text. That’s what we follow. I think to an extent, I don’t think it’s going to not going to replace, replace, but it is going to be like an add on to it.
Mike: That makes sense. I guess people listening who maybe haven’t done a lot of video themselves, they’ll be wondering, you know, with all this increase in video content and the fact that Animaker and other tools are making it easier to create, is it going to be more difficult to make videos stand out? And what should they be doing to make their videos really stand out?
RS: I don’t think so in 2025, creating video is no more a difficult task, to be precise. And especially if you’re a first timer. If you want to create a really high quality video, yes it is. But to stand out, I think standing out comes from the story. I think you can literally have the same character, same background, same all of it. But still you want to create the engagement comes from the story. It starts from the visuals. That’s what I always tell like, yeah, people ask like Raghav, this is like an anime because a lot of things are similar. How come these like millions of videos are created and engaged and all of it. It’s because of the story. After a point like yeah, it looks similar. in the first 10 seconds, but the moment you have a different story to tell using these tools, it’s like having a same template, like a pitch deck. You know, we used to joke in, I don’t know if you guys have heard about like this Y Combinator and Demo Days. Templates are the same, but somebody is going to raise a million dollars. Somebody is going to raise a hundred million dollars. Oh, because of the story difference, right? I think the story has to be different to stand out, I guess, always. But yeah, visually there are other ways to do it, like having a hook in the start and having a humor in the end and things like that. But that’s how it is differentiated.
Mike: I love that. Just focus on the story. Great advice there. You know, obviously the audience here is a marketing audience. So could you maybe give some more examples and perhaps more details about how marketers today are using tools like Animaker?
RS: Oh yeah, marketers are our biggest segment. I mean, people are using for explainer videos. I think there is different journey a marketing team go through like the marketing department. If you’re in a zero to one, I always see people started using for their explainer videos, like their product demos, launch. If you’re doing a product launch, have a nice video to it. So I think there is no excuse of not having a video to any of your product launches and initial days. And then this is a marketer who is working in a Fortune 100 companies. They have a different way of like, there is a huge sales-led pitch you are doing for a 100K deal, and people are coming to you, don’t just do a pitch deck. We have repeatedly saw having one embedded video in your sales demo, or in your product demo make a huge difference in a Fortune 100 companies in terms of selling those things like that. There are like multiple areas where you can embed your video experience throughout. Sometimes it could be face of yours. Sometimes it could be, yeah, the whole demo is boring. Like you’re doing it for like 30 minutes with all the visual content showing your face. I always tell them every five minutes, 10 minutes, have a nice video, right? That will make a huge difference in your pictures and demos, especially if you’re doing a webinar. Marketers do a lot of webinars, right? make sure you have like two three videos in your arsenal to show off whenever you think audience are not engaged enough throw those videos like that social media is a great example and especially since you said b2b is your segment i think linkedin is now a big driver for videos People have been saying skyrocketing numbers when people posting. I mean, that’s a right now if you are like, yeah, Instagram, all these are great. But for B2B, don’t just post your like nice, well written graphical post to videos. They have introduced a separate tab and there’s so much engagement people have been saying, especially B2B leads are getting generated from those LinkedIn videos, which you can just repurpose whatever you posted in Instagram, just repurpose it in LinkedIn as well.
Mike: I love that, and I love the idea of inserting videos into webinars. That’s certainly something I think I should be doing in our webinars. You’ve mentioned it a couple of times, I think I’ve mentioned it, that there are a lot of tools available to create videos now. So from your point of view, what are you trying to make Animaker really good at? What’s it unique at?
RS: Okay. See, especially, I mean, there are different times we try to differentiate ourselves, we build the moat differently. But if you ask me in 2025, the biggest problem, I would I won’t say like we solved it. But we that is a problem say something you will be judged based on the problem you take, and the problem which you’re working on. For Animaker, the biggest differentiator is, say, for example, there is Google Vue, there is the Shadvvd, all the Soras of worlds. But they have been optimizing their engine for video clips. But the way Animaker or our engines, our researches always work towards a full-on video generation. That’s our difference. You want a nice clip, like a 10-second, 20-second clip to insert in your campaign? Yeah, there are a lot of tools out there. But if you really want a full-blown video, come to Animaker because the problems are different. Clip generation is very different. But if it’s a video, you have to make sure your voiceover is right. Timeline is right. Character consistency is right. Background consistency is right. There are like easily 20, 25 problems that has to put across in a way. It’s not like you have to take all those problems, but you have to put it across in a way that it gives you a complete video. If you want a complete, purposeful video, Animaker is the engine which we have been optimizing and building it for a while.
Mike: No, absolutely. I mean, that makes sense. You know, VO3, it produces some amazing content, but you’re not going to make a good explainer in the time you’ve got with those video clips. I think that’s a really good example. So another thing I’m interested in is, you know, there’s been a lot of research that says, particularly in B2B, customers are spending less time talking to salespeople. They’re spending more time doing research, basically engaging with marketing content. What can marketers do to actually use video to kind of help the sales process, so help that top of the sales process as well as the marketing?
RS: I’ll go by our example, what we do, and we have also seen few customers, especially mid-size companies, which we work with, because the other one was like very demanding in terms of building those playbooks for sales people to engage and nurture them. One, they have just like SMS, WhatsApp and other things as a touch points. Now they started introducing video as one of the touch points, but from the different channels, like sending a video via WhatsApp, sending a video via retargeting ads, having a nice video embed. Now, a lot of email tools are allowing to embed a video into your email communications, things like that. And one of the big area I always recommend people, especially marketing teams, to have a video in your landing pages. When you land someone in your page, I think still right now, both chat VBD and Google Treat the time spent on the page so seriously towards the value of your content. I always tell them have this simple hack. The moment you have a video in your landing page for whatever it is you’re going to increase it because the people that video with page and video means a page with video and page without video you will easily see 10 times increase in engagement this people spend six seconds here be easily even they bounce your video they’ll spend like 60 40 60 seconds which is a big boon in terms of getting a traffic and getting these people engaged or hooked into your system so just introduce videos everywhere whatever it is possible in your funnel and have a lot of repurposing I think social media and another challenge I see people always say especially in a midsize company is we don’t have enough videos. No, you have a lot of videos. Go back. All your webinar contents are videos. If you record it, there is a lot of repurposing you can do. Look at your social media posts. Now everybody has their social media posts. 90% of your content is in social media. Can you take that as a B2B marketer and repurpose in your sales funnel? Not all your customers are going to come to your LinkedIn or Instagram, right? Repurpose into your email channels and things like that.
Mike: That’s really interesting advice, and I think there’s some great nuggets there people need to take away. I’m just going to change tack a bit. So you talked a little bit earlier, Raghu, about people having to spend $50,000 on creating a video, and now you can create it in minutes. It seems like Animaker is basically bypassing the design studio. Is that what you’re seeing? Marketers actually creating video rather than going to designers to do it?
RS: I think it’s an additional channels because I see the demand for videos of skyrocketed. I don’t think so a single design. Say we have a huge design team. We could have get rid of them like, if it is literally replaced, we should be the first one to get rid of them. But to be honest, there is so much demand. There is so much quality difference or a demand difference where we need. I think this is like an add on channel, which you should have to survey in the world where it demands videos. everywhere. It’s like having a writer. Yes, for a really great PR post, you go to your writer. Sometimes there’s a simple email you write to your customer, you just type it on your own. I think that’s exactly what is happening with the videos also. Yes, if you’re running a big ad, like a Super Bowl ad, go to an agency. They’re just posting some videos in a social media for an engagement for a quick product and launch. Come to Animaker, happy to engage. You can create one video with them. You can create 100 videos with us.
Mike: Yeah, I love that differentiation. I mean, one question I think some marketers will be asking, particularly those in bigger companies, is what about, you know, brand guidelines are remaining on brand. So with tools where you’re using AI to generate video, isn’t there a risk that you start deviating from brand guidelines?
RS: I think we are working on it. I think initial version, obviously most of the engines didn’t take it seriously. So whatever you’re saying is right. But I think that’s now just like character consistency, brand consistency is one of the big problem. Almost most of our engines like our engine also working towards that. But to an extent we have achieved it. So we now we had a logo consistency conveniently in our engine. where we are also dictating AI engines to make sure your color consistency. We are working with Johnson & Johnson, where their communication team basically have their very strict marketing guidelines and brand guidelines. Basically, we introduce it as part of our training engine. Now, anyone from Johnson & Johnson with their ID come and create videos, automatically these brands logics applied to it. But if you ask me, we are fully there. No, but we’ll be with that very soon. You know, it’s like, like, you wake up tomorrow, it’ll be done.
Mike: I love that. So I think we’re probably recording this a little bit ahead of when it’s published. So no doubt by the time this is published, it’ll all be done. Oh, yes. So you’ve talked a lot about some of the changes that happened in video, particularly over the last couple of years. I mean, what do you see as being the main changes that marketers are going to see going forward over the next maybe three to five years?
RS: Oh, yeah, I mean, in the video space, and in the cross functional of marketing and videos, the biggest change I can see is the importance of story, as I’ve been keep telling, because of the LLM model, the stories are going to be a little bit consistent, especially if you just Everybody is going to go and prompt, tell me a great story of some, you’re building a sales engine, you’re asking. The story consistency is going to, because LLMs are tuned to that. Basically, whatever answers is get, it’s giving an answer end of the day. I think the big differentiator where the people going to survive better in the segment is coming up with different stories. That’s one thing I could see. And another biggest change where it’s going to work really, really well for marketers is these newer engines that we call it as like, I don’t know, you heard about this one person billion dollar company, it’s called one person billion dollar.com or something that people have been tracking, or like, how, I mean, it’s not you can jump from 1000 person company to one overnight, but it’s going to happen stage by stage, which means that the next three, four years, I could see one marketer running the whole department. That’s, I mean, that’s how we narrowed down. So there will be a lot of agents. If marketers are good at using these agents to their advantage, there could be a video agent for you. Yeah, whenever you create it, use that agent to come up with the video. Oh, okay. I’m working on this. Can you also just work on this video and post me some video examples that I can use it? Having your own video agent is going to be very true in not even two, three years. I would say even another year, maybe next year and everybody going to have their own video agent, assist them with videos whenever they want.
Mike: That sounds quite exciting. Although, I mean, talking to some marketers who I think feel very stressed in part of a marketing department, the idea of running it all themselves might be a little bit terrifying.
RS: Oh yeah, I know, I know, it’s a difficult time. But I’ll tell you, on the other hand, if you have come this side, you feel like there is so much work to be done. Say for example, you don’t need to come. And next time, your AI author may come and interview me. Maybe I won’t come, like I may send my… I mean, these are like jokes before, but to be honest, there are companies who are already doing it. And the results are 70-80% it’s good. It’s just a bit scary.
Mike: I mean, that’s exciting. That’s exciting and challenging. Rago, it’s been great talking to you. I’ve really enjoyed learning about Animaker. But before I let you go, there’s just a couple of questions we’d like to ask all our guests. And the first question is, what’s the best marketing advice that’s ever been given from someone to you?
RS: Oh, OK. See, that’s an interesting question. Say the biggest marketing advice I’ve ever got is, marketers always live in the edge of learning newer things. I think that’s a piece of advice I always get. If you are a marketer, you should know what is happening around you, which to make to your advantage. Like people call it as like, don’t do a push marketing. Like, always be a full marketer, like, how can you design something well? But from a product maker angle, that’s another piece of advice I got from an entrepreneur, which I always take it, marketing starts before even your product development starts. I always see that like the moment a feature or something we have developed, the first thing goes in my mind is like, how come the customer is going to receive it? I think if you start anything so early in marketing, I mean, if you start so early with your cycle, I think marketing is going to be super easy. Then like, oh, I made all of this. Now let’s figure out how to market this. It is a very, very difficult situation for the marketing team and anyone. So that’s a piece of advice I got. If you’re a marketer, involve yourself from the start so that it’s way better. You can actually include those ideas and challenges part of it. Yes.
Mike: I love that. That’s great and probably makes great products because you’re making products that customers are going to love. The other question we like to ask people is more about you giving advice. So if you’re talking to a young person who was just starting a career in marketing, what advice would you give them? Oh yeah, that’s a good question.
RS: Again, great marketers, I always think they are like 50% great learners and 50% great thinkers. I think if you can really balance these two in your everyday, especially if you are very young, don’t keep reading. Also, don’t keep doing. If you do 50-50, you’ll become a greatest marketer ever. The people I have worked with, they really split these two of learning all the time and thinking how to apply those learnings into their work and into their job. I feel like that is a great piece of advice I got. I would really recommend that to anyone who’s just getting started. Do this to exercise all the time.
Mike: Fabulous. Rago, thank you. It’s been fascinating. I mean, if people have listened to this and they’re really excited about creating more video and they want to learn more about Animaker, what’s the best thing for them to do?
RS: Oh, come to our website or ping me in LinkedIn. Check out Animaker.com. Use it. If you guys have any questions, happy to help. And we always get excited working with marketers. And these millions and millions of users we have acquired, just working with these marketers, learning from them, to be honest. People ask me, how come you build these millions and millions of users? Because we all work with marketers all the time. They give us like tons of ideas how to build. It’s a great community of marketers, to be honest. I think we share knowledge and stuff. Happy to help in any way possible. Happy to get helped also.
Mike: That’s awesome. And such a positive collaborative view. Raghu, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and expertise, telling us about Animaker. And thanks for being a guest on Marketing B2B Technology.
RS: Thank you, Mike, for being an amazing host. It was really, really nice talking to you. It’s very refreshing on a very early morning just getting started. This is amazing. Thanks, Mike. Thank you.
Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast application. If you’d like to know more, please visit our website at napierb2b.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.
