Indian company wants to obliterate WebEx
At DEMO Fall 2007, a conference that handpicks emerging technologies and new products from all over the world, India’s voice was heard through dimdim this time.
A company founded by Indian promoters, which claims to be “the world’s first free Web-based meeting service based on open source platform”, dimdim was among the 70 technology firms which displayed their wares at the conference last week at San Diego in California.
“WebEx is history,” is how DD Ganguly, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO), dimdim, started off his presentation.
WebEx is a web conferencing solution from Cisco, but not based on open source.
Deepak Ajwani, executive editor, Digit, explains what is open source: “Open source software allows others to change and improve the software, as well as develop and build applications around it, thus enabling them to enhance the user experience of the software.”
Another competitor for dimdim would be PlaceWare, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2003.
But Ganguly said “dimdim is the world’s first free and open source web meeting solution.”
“Our open source software has already been installed in 1,25,000 companies all over the world. Anybody who can use a browser irrespective of technical ability can show their slides and their desktops, as well as talk and listen with two-way audio, broadcast their webcam and chat - all from a browser, with zero installation,” said Ganguly, who was earlier founder and CEO of the Boston-based Advanced Internet Management.
After it was acquired by Computer Associates in 2001, Ganguly continued as vice-president of product development at Computer Associates. “Help us democratise web meetings, help us make WebEx history,” was Ganguly’s plea at the conference, which is available as a video file on dimdim’s website.
Dimdim has also managed to rake in about $2.5 million from venture capitalists Draper Richards, Nexus India Capital and Index Ventures.
Howard Hartenbaum, general partner at Draper Richards, said in a video file on the Net: “The reasons we invested are quite simple. First, collaboration over the internet is getting democratised. In the past, my firm invested in hotmail and Skypem, and now dimdim is the next logical step in the progression.
Second, dimdim has a great founding team which has been working together successfully for the past 12 years. Great team and a great idea - an obvious candidate for investment.”
