Blackbird hires Sumit Rai as chief product officer

Blackbird, developer and seller of the cloud native video editing platform, Blackbird, has announced the appointment of Sumit Rai as chief product officer. Rai will join the company in June 2022 from Vegas Creative Software where he holds the same role.

Rai has over 23 years leadership experience in the video and film industry. Starting off as a visual effects and video editor in news production, children’s TV and film, Rai progressed to CTO at Pukka Films developing an innovative, award-winning production facility before founding Kulu Valley. Providing enterprise video distribution platforms for tier 1 organizations, Kulu Valley was acquired by Qumu in 2014 where he served as CMO and chief product officer.

Rai is leaving his position as chief product officer of the video editing platform, Vegas Pro. He joins Blackbird to lead the strategic development and direction of the company’s product suite.

Having developed video editing and distribution platforms used by thousands of companies and millions of users, Rai will help take Blackbird’s multi award-winning and multi-patented technology to wider markets.

Rai said: “As the future of video content creation moves to the cloud it’s great to be joining Blackbird, already leaders in the space. The opportunities are endless as the technology can add major efficiencies and value in so many markets and enable many new users. I can’t wait to start working alongside the Blackbird team.”

Blackbird CEO, Ian McDonough, added: “I am truly delighted to welcome Sumit, who joins us with immense personal drive and energy informed by relevant industry experience in SaaS video platforms. We are bringing him into the Blackbird team to lead the strategic development of our product portfolio and help accelerate our growth. He joins the Company at an exciting time when we are very well positioned to leverage our core technology into fast growing video markets.”