Bengaluru-based BanyanBoard is building a niche at the intersection of animation, computer vision and live sports broadcasting. Co-founded six years ago by identical twin brothers, both engineers with PhDs and a combined 33 granted patents, the company has evolved from developing video annotation technology into creating real-time virtual graphics and advertising solutions for sports broadcasts.
The decision to establish BanyanBoard in India was driven by a shared ambition to invent and build technology independently. BanyanBoard co-founder Shankar Sivaramakrishnan explained in an interview with AnimationXpress at the Broadcast India Show, “We wanted to build something in India and we wanted to basically invent tech.”
The company’s initial product, developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, enabled users to draw annotations over videos and exchange them remotely. While the product did not gain significant traction beyond the pandemic, the founders discovered a promising application in sports, where coaches and professional teams routinely use video annotations for performance analysis.
This led Banyan Board into sports graphics and, eventually, live broadcast graphics. “We started doing it live, so we’ve done about 5,000 games of live broadcast graphics,” Sivaramakrishnan shared, describing the company’s work over the past three to four years. However, commercial limitations in its initial broadcast model prompted the founders to explore a more specialised opportunity: virtual advertising placements within live sports footage.
Making virtual graphics trackerless
One of BanyanBoard’s key innovations is its trackerless approach to virtual graphics insertion. Traditionally, virtual advertising systems rely on tracking devices attached to broadcast cameras. These devices communicate camera movements and positioning to the graphics system, allowing digital elements to remain aligned with the live footage.
BanyanBoard’s approach eliminates the need for this additional hardware. Instead, its software analyses the incoming video feed to determine the camera’s movements, including zoom, tilt and pan, and automatically adjusts the virtual graphic’s position in real time.
“Our innovation is to do it trackerless,” Sivaramakrishnan explained. “We just get the video from the end customer, we figure out what is the camera doing, what is its zoom, tilt, pan, everything we figure out live.”
The challenge is particularly significant in cricket, where the camera typically captures a largely uniform green playing field. The company has engineered its system to perform the required calculations and insert graphics within approximately 20 milliseconds, allowing it to operate within the demands of India’s 50-frames-per-second broadcast environment. As Sivaramakrishnan explained, “Within the 20 milliseconds, do all the calculation, it’s automated.”
The company has also developed a more advanced workflow that works directly with the fully produced programme feed, commonly referred to as the PGM or dirty feed. Rather than requiring access to individual camera feeds or changes to the broadcaster’s existing setup, BanyanBoard receives the completed broadcast, identifies when the main camera is on air and inserts the virtual advertisement. When the director switches cameras, the graphic is removed just as quickly.
Explaining the advantage of this approach, the Sivaramakrishnan said, “They just send us the fully produced feed, we send back the same fully produced feed except with graphics in one or two cameras.”
Expanding the global sports footprint
The approach is already finding applications internationally. BanyanBoard is working with Cricket Australia across several ODI, T20 and state-level matches, supporting geo-targeted advertising that enables different brands to appear in feeds distributed to different geographical markets.
“We help them do geo-targeted advertising, so we are able to send different brands to different geographies that they are sending the feed to,” Sivaramakrishnan said. Its technology stack also includes feed rebroadcasting, allowing the company to distribute customised versions of the broadcast to multiple rights holders and channels.
Beyond cricket, BanyanBoard is developing trackerless graphics capabilities for racket sports such as tennis, badminton and squash, combat sports including wrestling, boxing and MMA, and racing formats such as horse racing and motorsports. The company is also improving its capabilities in basketball and football.
Its current solutions include floor graphics and goal-line advertising placements in football, although full LED perimeter replacement remains an area for further development.
Building the next generation of live graphics
The company’s next phase of development centres on improving visual realism, supporting moving cameras and making its technology increasingly accessible through remote operations. It is also working on extending its system to handle panning and tilting cameras remotely, a technically demanding capability for which it is preparing a patent application.
“We want to be able to up the realism, work with moving cameras and be able to do it completely remotely,” Sivaramakrishnan said.
With its technology developed in-house, BanyanBoard is continuing to invest in research and product development to reduce latency and simplify integration for broadcasters.
By combining automated camera analysis with real-time graphics insertion, the company is positioning itself to make virtual advertising more flexible and accessible across live sports. Its evolution from a video annotation platform to a specialist broadcast technology provider reflects a broader opportunity: using software-led innovation to create new commercial possibilities within the live sports viewing experience.
