When Vikrant Mathur and Alok Ranjan co-founded media tech company Future Today in 2006, the rest of the industry was building paywalls. Streaming was synonymous with subscription, and free, ad-supported video was an afterthought. The duo bet otherwise.

Twenty years later, they believe it has paid off as Future Today operates Fawesome and HappyKids, two U.S. ad-supported streaming platforms that reach more than 75 million households and deliver over 2 billion monthly impressions. The company also powers OTT and FAST channels for hundreds of content owners, providing infrastructure to launch and monetize connected TV services across Roku, Fire TV, Samsung TV Plus, Vizio, and LG.

Now, Vikrant is making a second bet. Fawesome added more than 50 creator partnerships in the past year, including basketball YouTube star Jesser, who brings nearly 40 million subscribers to the platform. The logic is the same as it was in 2006: get to where audiences are heading before everyone else does.

“The Creator Economy has already won on mobile,” Vikrant says. “The next evolution is bringing that fandom to the biggest screen in the home.”

The Contrarian Thesis That Took Two Decades to Validate

Vikrant didn’t build Future Today because the market was ready. He built it because he believed the market would catch up.

In 2006, Netflix had not yet launched its streaming service. Roku did not exist. The concept of FAST channels was years away from having a name. The industry consensus was that quality content required paid access. Free meant remnant inventory and diminished value.

“People have always been comfortable with advertising in exchange for content,” Vikrant says. “Television proved that for decades. What felt inevitable was that streaming would follow the same path, but with better targeting, better measurement, and more personalization.”

The early years were difficult. Infrastructure wasn’t there. Devices weren’t ready. The ecosystem lagged behind the vision. “There were long stretches where the market hadn’t caught up to what we believed was inevitable,” he says. “Every time distribution improved or devices got smarter, engagement followed. We weren’t guessing. We were just early.”

That patience is reflected in the current scale. Fawesome offers more than 200,000 movies and TV shows across genres. HappyKids serves kids and families with COPPA-compliant content, growing its audience 45% year-over-year. Studio partnerships include Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount, and Sony. Combined, Future Today’s platforms drove more than 850 million hours of viewing in 2025, according to Vikrant.

Bringing Creators to the Living Room Is a Translation Problem

Free streaming’s next chapter runs through the Creator Economy, and Future Today’s push into creator partnerships is not a rebranding exercise. It’s a response to a gap that Vikrant believes no one has properly closed.

Creators have built massive, loyal audiences on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. But those audiences are fractured across devices, monetization is platform-dependent, and long-form, co-viewing experiences remain underserved. Future Today’s pitch is that it can take a creator’s mobile-first fandom and bring it into a premium living room environment.

The 50-plus creator partnerships added in the past year span sports, gaming, lifestyle, and family entertainment. Jesser, whose basketball content draws millions on YouTube, represents the flagship case. But the challenge with every one of those partnerships is the same: content that works on a phone doesn’t automatically work on a TV screen.

“You can’t just port content, you have to reimagine it,” Vikrant says. “We work closely with creators to evolve pacing, storytelling, and production value while preserving what made them successful in the first place. It’s about upgrading the experience without losing authenticity.”

This is not Future Today’s first time navigating this translation. The company built early experience partnering with multi-channel networks during YouTube’s MCN era, helping bring creator-led content onto emerging streaming platforms. That history informs what Vikrant describes as the core discipline of the work.

What Creators Consistently Underestimate About CTV

For creators evaluating the move to connected TV, Vikrant’s perspective is grounded in diversification rather than hype. “The pitch is scale, monetization, and longevity,” he says. “We help creators move from platform-dependent revenue to more diversified, sustainable models, while reaching audiences in a premium environment.”

But the transition exposes gaps that most creators don’t anticipate. “Long-form content requires different storytelling, higher production standards, and consistency,” Vikrant says. “It’s a different discipline, but the upside is significantly greater.”

Vikrant notes that creators who depend on a single platform are exposed to algorithm changes, monetization shifts, and policy decisions outside their control. He believes that CTV offers a path to a more durable revenue mix, one that includes premium advertising, co-viewing experiences, and audiences that traditional digital metrics often miss.

CTV Is No Longer a Branding Channel

Brands and agencies have historically treated CTV as an awareness play: good for reach, hard to connect to outcomes. Vikrant argues that framing is outdated, and Future Today is building the infrastructure to prove it.

Audience Advantage, the company’s targeting and measurement solution, is designed to move advertisers beyond impressions toward real-world results. The platform integrates privacy-safe targeting with outcome measurement across categories, including attention, brand lift, foot traffic, and sales. Data partnerships include Circana, TransUnion, LiveRamp, MRI-Simmons, and EDO, with activation through The Trade Desk and Magnite.

Advertisers in Future Today’s mix include Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and DoorDash. “They understand that context matters as much as audience,” Vikrant says. “It’s not just about who you reach, it’s where and how you reach them. Brand-safe, co-viewing environments drive higher engagement and better outcomes.”

The brand safety argument is particularly strong in the kids and family segment. HappyKids is built to be COPPA-compliant (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), with content curated from the ground up. “Brand safety is foundational for us,” Vikrant says. “It’s not a feature, it’s the product.” 

His challenge to brands is direct: stop asking whether the environment is safe, and start asking whether it produces meaningful engagement. “In family environments, ads are not just seen, they’re discussed and acted upon.”

The Multicultural Signal Brands Are Still Missing

One of the clearest trends inside Future Today’s platforms doesn’t show up in headline metrics. Multicultural audiences are growing faster than the rest of the platform, and Vikrant believes most brands haven’t registered what that means.

To illustrate, Vikrant reports that Hispanic watch time on Fawesome is up 120% year-over-year. African American watch time is up 45%. Together, those groups now represent 25% and 20% of Fawesome’s audience, respectively. Programming in both categories grew more than 50% over the same period.

“It signals that streaming is becoming more reflective of real audiences,” he says. “The growth we’re seeing isn’t a niche trend, it’s a structural shift. Audiences want content that reflects their identities and experiences.”

The opportunity for brands, he argues, is not simply to buy into these audiences as a demographic checkbox. It is to engage authentically within environments that are culturally relevant. Most advertisers are still approaching this reactively, following audience composition rather than investing ahead of it.

The Integrated Ecosystem

Twenty years after betting against the industry consensus on paid streaming, Vikrant is now making a parallel argument about where the Creator Economy goes next.

“We’re building toward a fully integrated ecosystem where content, creators, and commerce come together seamlessly on the biggest screen in the home,” Vikrant says. “That means deeper investment in creator-led programming, more advanced advertising solutions focused on outcomes, and continued expansion of our technology platform.”

The conditions he identifies as necessary for that vision are already materializing. The shift toward privacy-first data strategies is accelerating. Outcome-based measurement is moving from a premium feature to an industry expectation. Creator audiences are increasingly following long-form content on connected TV.

“It’s validating, but more importantly, it’s energizing,” he says. “When you spend nearly two decades building toward something and the market finally aligns, it creates a very different kind of momentum. Now the question isn’t ‘Will this work?’ It’s ‘How far can we take it?'”

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Check Out Our Podcast