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Tag: zoom app

  • Webkonf- First Homegrown Video Conferencing And Screen Sharing Platform

    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Webkonf.

    The outbreak of the global pandemic has upended the traditional ways of doing things. Many things got different solutions to them due to pandemics. One such thing was about conducting office meets and business calls. Pandemic made each and everyone physically far from each other. However, the working pattern was in need of everyone’s coordination. At such times, technology gave way for the world to move on. With the introduction of virtual meetings, the concept soon found a way to acknowledgment due to the need for hours.

    Virtual meetings were able to fill up the space formed in communication and physical presence during a pandemic. Hence, they found an easy path to success. Till now, the tradition of virtual meetings has been accepted by a mass of companies. The platform, Webkonf provides a real-time and constantly evolving method of connecting with different business associates for the work to go on. Webkonf meeting platform itself was developed as the product researched during Lockdown by the startup firm located in Hyderabad.

    Webkonf- Company Highlights

    Company Name Webkonf
    Headquarter Hyderabad
    Founder Rama Narayana Reddy Malay
    Founded 26 May 2020
    Sector Video Conference Platform
    Website webkonf.io

    Webkonf- About and How it Works
    Webkonf- Founder and Team
    Webkonf- Startup Story
    Webkonf- Name, Tagline and Logo
    Webkonf- Vision and Mission
    Webkonf- Products and Services
    Webkonf- Business and Revenue Model
    Webkonf- Competitors
    Webkonf- Future Plans

    Webkonf- About and How it Works

    Webkonf.io video conferencing App

    Webkonf is a video-conferencing platform that connects people through video, voice, chat, and content sharing. It is a web-based Audio, Video & Screen Sharing solution for meetings and conferences. They use open source systems and oracle cloud for security and scalability. Webkonf introduces background blur and noise cancellation features.

    Webkonf Meetings Private Limited is a non-government, Private project incorporated on 26 May 2020. Webkonf is classified under the section of the non-government company with its registration done at the registrar of companies in Hyderabad.  The company is authorized with the share capital of Rs. 10,00,000 and paid-up capital of Rs. 1,00,000. Webkonf is not just limited to creating a communication space, it also provides other basic computer-related activities such as maintenance of websites created for some other firms along with the creation of multimedia presentations for different firms, etc.

    The product Webkonf meeting was the result of research done in by the Hyderabad Startup in Lockdown.

    It was developed as an outcome of lockdown research done by the startup located in Hyderabad.

    Last year’s global web conference market size was US $2.5 billion and is expected to be US $5 billion by 2025. Indian market share is expected to be between 500 million and 750 million by 2025, as stated by Ram Malay.

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    Google Meet. What is Google Meet? What is the AI Noise Cancellation Feature of Google Meet?
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    Webkonf- Founder and Team

    Ram Malay

    Ram Malay | Webkonf Founder
    Ram Malay | Webkonf Founder

    Ram Malay has done his BTech from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in Electronics and Communications. Presently, he is also the CEO of Soniks Consulting, which is a firm with latest & innovative domains /technology entries which can help companies bridge gaps in current operations. Mr. Malay is also a Founder at SuperBigStore.com, which aims to be India’s #1 online store for Diapers, Wipes and Sanitary Napkins.

    Their growth trajectory has been quite impressive. It has grown from employing just three individuals to over 100 individuals currently. Today, the company’s talented employees handle multiple industry verticals across the world. The company is bootstrapped for the time being.

    Zoom Success Story – Helping The World in Surviving this Pandemic with Video Communications!
    With the coronavirus pandemic hitting the whole world at large, the face-to-facebusiness activities had to take a toll. That’s when this company raised to itsmagnificence. We are talking about the Zoom cloud meeting which was founded byEric S. Yuan in 2011. Zoom is an American company offering r…
    StartupTalkyRishabh Rathi

    Webkonf- Startup Story

    Webkonf Meeting Startup Story
    Webkonf Meeting Startup Story

    The idea to launch Webkonf clocked my mind just before the COVID-19 lockdown when I and my team realized the need for an effective communication and collaboration tool. We felt that such a platform could lead to better connectivity and make our work more productive. With this realization, we commenced to work on building such a platform, and hence, Webkonf was born.

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    Webkonf Logo
    Webkonf Logo

    Webkonf is a video-conferencing tool, used for virtual meetings with its special features.

    The name Webkonf somehow resembles its purpose of web conferencing.

    The Webkonf logo is made up of two different colors, i.e Blue and green. The logo consists of the “c” shaped half circle made up of blue and green colors with the term “Webkonf” written from within it. The letter “W” of webkonf is also written in two colors, the first half is blue, and the part below blue is written in green color.

    Webkonf- Vision and Mission

    With a vision to create innovative products with the customer at their heart and a mission to deliver outstanding technology-based experiences to users, Hyderabad based Soniks Consulting’s Webkonf Meetings is India’s first simple, secured, and protected web video conferencing and screen sharing platform. This application, without any data breaches for data privacy, enables Local hosting end to end encryption. It signifies that Webkonf never collects any data which is irrelevant for Webkonf operations like the majority of other applications which collect users’ browse history.

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    Webkonf- Products and Services

    Webkonf Home Page
    Webkonf Home Page

    Webkonf Meetings is their most significant innovation ever. They’re confident that the platform will grow bigger and is definitely more impactful. It is India’s first extremely simple, secured, and protected video conferencing platform. It enables Local hosting end-to-end encryption without breaching any data.

    Unlike other applications, Webkonf does not collect the data or browser history of users. Webkonf is potential enough to be adopted by almost 10 million people in a brief period. We are planning for a paid version of Webkonf Meetings once new features and enhancements are released. We are planning for a virtual launch of a commercial version of the Webkon, as explained by Mr. Ram Malay.

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    Webkonf- Business and Revenue Model

    Businesses are facing a tough time in contemporary India. While the verticals of traditional business have slowed down, digital space such as apps and webs or e-commerce grew by 300%. Webkonf usage has grown rapidly. Projects of digital, apps, and web are growing alongside fresh acquisitions. Hence, they are expanding mobile and web teams for satisfying user needs. They plan to add AI capabilities and machine learning to their platform which will be a long-term roadmap in progress. Oracle for Cloud needs and expansion has been our partner to produce superior performance and overall experience for the end-users.

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    Webkonf- Competitors

    Video conferencing has gained much acknowledgment during and after the pandemic. Earlier these platforms were not much used and known by everyone. However, after the pandemic, few already existing platforms started giving special attention to their online services and on other hand, many new startups were known to develop such platforms. Hence we can estimate that Webkonf might be getting its share of competition from many similar platforms, Some of the most common are:

    Reliance launched JioMeet to compete with Zoom, Google Meet
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    StartupTalkyVarad Kitey

    Webkonf- Future Plans

    Webkonf is the most significant innovation at a time like this where it’s all virtual meetings. It is India’s first video conferencing platform which is simple, secured, and protected. It will have a deeper impact and will grow humongously over the years making it one of a kind than its contenders.

    They are looking forward to getting a paid version of Webkonf Meetings in the near future. But it’s possible only after new features and enhancements are released. They are planning for a virtual launch of a commercial version of their product at the earliest. Adding, AI capabilities and machine learning to their platform is their future plan. It can be considered as a long-term roadmap that is already started with its progress. Over the next five years, they envision their startup to grow into one of the most powerful, influential and innovative startup brands and scale across regions globally.

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    The born of a new work culture has led to the birth of a slightly modified wayof working. Be it Remote Working [/adjust-remote-working/], work from home[/productivity-working-remotely-khushaboo-jain/], or online classes; videoconferencing is the basic tool [/tag/top-video-conferencing-tools/]to o…
    StartupTalkyAvantika Bhardwaj

    Conclusion

    Webkonf provides a secure environment for the purpose of online communication and video conferencing through its medium. Webkonf was developed by Ram Malay, the CEO of Soniks Consulting. Webkonnf gives a tough competition to other already developed platforms like Zoom and Google meet. The best feature provided by Webkonf is its background noise cancellation with the policy of collecting no-user data through its medium.

    FAQs

    When was Webkonf introduced to the crowd?

    Webkonf was introduced on 26 May 2020 by the CEO of Soniks Consulting “Ram Malay”.

    The biggest competitors of WEebkonf are?

    Webkonf gets its competition from popular platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, Jio Meet, etc.

    What is the mission of Webkonf?

    The mission of Webkonf is to deliver outstanding technology-based user experiences.

  • How Pandemic Contributed to the Success of Zoom Video Communications?

    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Zoom.

    The global video conferencing market size is expected to reach USD 10.92 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 9.7% during the forecast period. Zoom Video Communications, Inc. incorporated on April 04, 2011, is a provider of video-first communication platform and Web conferencing services. In recent times, Zoom became a global phenomenon as businesses had to revert to working from home.

    The Company offers cloud-native platform, which unifies cloud video conferencing, online meetings, group messaging and a software-based conference room system, which enables users to easily experience Zoom Meetings in their physical meeting spaces.

    With the coronavirus pandemic hitting the whole world at large, face-to-face business activities had to take a plunge. That’s when this company became a savior for every online meeting that took place. We are talking about the Zoom cloud meeting which was founded by Eric S. Yuan in 2011.

    Zoom is an American company offering remote conferencing services. It is headquartered in San Jose, California. Zoom also has offices in Europe, Asia, and Australia. It primarily provides a remote conferencing service that combines other tertiary services like video conferencing, online meetings, chat, and mobile collaboration to facilitate conducting business virtually. It is one of the online meeting platforms which paved its way for success.

    Zoom success during pandemic was unexpected and it was a turning point in their organization. Read on to know more about the Zoom success story below.

    Zoom – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Zoom
    Headquarters San Jose, California, United States
    Industry Video Communication and Conferencing
    Founder Eric Yuan
    Founded 2011
    Total Funding Raised $276 Million
    Parent Organization Zoom Video Communications, Inc.

    Zoom – About
    Zoom – Impact of COVID19
    Zoom – Founder
    Zoom – Startup Story
    Zoom – Customer Acquisition
    Zoom – Mission
    Zoom – Business Model
    Zoom – Mergers and Acquisitions
    Zoom – Funding and Investors
    Zoom – Valuation
    Zoom – Competitors
    Zoom – Challenges Faced
    Zoom – Future Plans

    Zoom – About

    Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (or simply Zoom) is an American communications technology company headquartered in San Jose, California. It provides videotelephony and online chat services through a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform and is used for teleconferencing, telecommuting, distance education, and social relations.

    The company develops a people-centric cloud service that transforms real-time collaboration experience. The Company offers unified meeting experience, a cloud service that provides a 3-in-1 meeting platform with HD video conferencing, mobility, and web meetings. The company’s cloud-native platform enables face-to-face video and connects users across various devices and locations in a single meeting. Zoom, which was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Jose, California, serves companies of all sizes from all industries around the world.

    Zoom Cloud meetings offer a free video-conferencing facility for up to 100 participants. It offers a communications platform that connects people through video, voice, chat, and content sharing. Zoom is compatible with Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Chrome OS, and Linux. Originally, it came with a 40-minute time limit but now due to coronavirus lockdown, this limit has been removed. If the companies want to add more participants and avail of more advanced features, paid subscriptions are available with the Zoom meeting app. Zoom’s closed source software is claimed to be compliant with FedRAMP, HIPAA, PIPEDA and PHIPA, and the GDPR.

    Initially, when Zoom was launched, it could host video conferences with only 15 participants which got increased to 25, two years after its inception. From there, it directly jumped to a participation limit of 100 in 2015 followed by 1000 for business customers.

    Users can hold one-on-one meetings or conduct video conferences with up to 500 participants. Screen sharing allows meeting participants to better coordinate within meetings and distribute information.

    The company has an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, collaboration, chat, and webinars across mobile devices, desktops, telephones, and room systems.

    The worldwide adoption of Zoom is powered by its two core products: Zoom Meetings and Chat as well as Zoom Rooms and Workspaces. Zoom Meetings can be attended and held via a web browser, or desktop and mobile applications. The  Chat works as an extension to the Meeting product where users can interact through a chat with each other, share files, or create groups.

    Rooms and Workspaces, on the other hand, allows businesses to utilize hardware such as a computer, tablet, camera, microphone, and more to hold virtual meetings. The product is specifically aimed at larger-scale organizations, which need to hold meetings across different offices. To make integration with the hardware easier, Zoom even offers its own set of hardware that they developed in collaboration with other manufacturers.

    Zoom – Impact of COVID19

    COVID-19 really boosted the success story of Zoom. This is when the Zoom Success strategy worked out really well. We’ve outlined its impact below!

    • With the pandemic intensifying, lockdowns were announced in almost all the affected countries which took Zoom to an altogether new level.
    • Be it companies, schools, or colleges, all started using Zoom Video Communications to conduct business meetings and deliver lectures.
    • Zoom offered its services to K–12 schools free of charge in many countries.
    • Zoom also released a paid education plan which allows unlimited meetings for up to 300 people. Not just that, these meetings are graced with the options of recording, transcription, and various other administrative controls.
    • These activities contributed to a sharp rise in Zoom usage and contributed to Zoom success during pandemic. For example, in just a day, the Zoom application was downloaded 3,43,000 times.
    • The company gained over 2.22 million users in the initial months of 2020. This number exceeded the number of users and  Zoom had amassed entirely in 2019.
    • Consequently, by March 2020, the Zoom share price increased to US$160.98 per share. This drafted an increase of about 263% as compared to its initial share prices when it came out with an IPO.
    • Zoom also became the go-to social platform for the Millennials. During this pandemic when they couldn’t step out, they used Zoom for blind dates and recess and many more fun activities that could turn their boredom into delight.
    • The founder, Yuan, added $20 Million to his net worth in just one day. This took his total net worth to $5.6 Billion!

    Zoom – Founder

    The Founder of Zoom is Eric S. Yuan.

    Eric S. Yuan, Founder, Zoom
    Eric S. Yuan, Founder, Zoom

    Educational qualification

    Bachelor’s and master’s degrees in applied mathematics and computer science from the Shandong University of Science and Technology.

    Early life

    Yuan was working with WebEx, which was acquired by Cisco Systems and that’s when he became vice president of engineering. After that, he went on to launch Zoom Video Communications.

    Zoom – Startup Story

    Eric Yuan is a former corporate vice president for Cisco WebEx. He left Cisco in April 2011 with 40 engineers to start a new company, originally named Saasbee, Inc. Prior to starting Zoom, Yuan spent 14 years leading engineering teams – first at WebEx, then at Cisco after its acquisition of WebEx in 2007.

    At Cisco, he often saw how frustrated the company’s customers were with their inability to listen to their demands and the slow product iteration process.

    The company had trouble finding investors because many people thought the video telephony market was already saturated. In June 2011, the company raised $3 million of seed money from WebEx founder Subrah Iyar, former Cisco SVP and General Counsel Dan Scheinman, and venture capitalists Matt Ocko, TSVC, and Bill Tai.

    In May 2012, the company changed its name to Zoom, influenced by Thacher Hurd’s children’s book Zoom City. In September 2012, Zoom launched a beta version that could host conferences with up to 15 video participants. In November 2012, the company signed Stanford University as its first customer.

    The service was launched in January 2013 after the company raised a $6 million Series A round from Qualcomm Ventures, Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang, WebEx founder Subrah Iyar, and former Cisco SVP and General Counsel Dan Scheinman. Zoom launched version 1.0 of the program allowing the maximum number of participants per conference to be 25. By the end of its first month, Zoom had 400,000 users and by May 2013 it had 1 million users. In the recent COVID times, Zoom rose to worldwide prominence as many companies use it to conduct meetings and organize their work processes.

    Zoom – Customer Acquisition

    Zoom's Business Customers growth
    Zoom’s Business Customers growth

    Within just one year of inception, Zoom recorded participation of 1 million user base. In its first year, Zoom established partnerships with multiple B2B collaboration software providers which included Redbooth (then Teambox), and together created a program that was named “Works with Zoom“. This, in turn, worked for Zoom in establishing more superior partnerships with hardware and software vendors like Logitech, Vaddio, and InFocus.

    Zoom in 2014

    Zoom had already reached 10 million users by 2014. And this number skyrocketed in 2015 when it went on to 40 million individuals with 65,000 organizations subscribed to the Zoom Video Conferencing Services. By 2015, Zoom had already hosted a total of 1 billion meeting minutes since its inception.

    Zoom in 2017

    Zoom hosted Zoomtopia 2017 in the year that was Zoom’s first-ever annual user conference. During this conference, they announced a dynamic series of new products and partnerships, which also included Zoom’s Partnership with Meta. This partnership was envisioned to integrate Zoom with Augmented Reality, more popularly known as AR. Also, Zoom announced its native support for Skype for Business and its futile integration with Slack, Workplace by Facebook, and its initial steps towards artificial intelligence (AI) speech-to-text converter.

    Zoom – Mission

    Zoom’s mission statement says, “Our mission is to develop a people-centric cloud service that unifies your meeting experience and improves the quality and effectiveness of communications forever.“

    Zoom – Business Model

    The business model of Zoom is built on charging businesses a reoccurring subscription fee for the various products the company offers. On top of that, Zoom makes money from the promotion of hardware products.

    Zoom – Revenue and Growth

    Zoom's Revenue Growth
    Zoom’s Revenue Growth

    Zoom has recorded annual revenue of $953 Million in 2021.

    Zoom Video Communications’ revenue for the quarter ending October 31, 2020 was $0.777B, a 366.52% increase year-over-year. Zoom Video Communications revenue for the twelve months ending October 31, 2020 was $1.957B, a 262.29% increase year-over-year.

    Zoom has 504,900 business customers.

    Zoom – Mergers and Acquisitions

    Zoom extended its communication network and service through mergers and acquisition as listed below.

    • In 2015, Zoom announced the integration of Zoom video conferencing with Salesforce’s customer relationship management platform. This collaboration allowed the sales team to initiate such conferences with their sales leads without leaving the application.
    • In 2017, Zoom went on to launch Telehealth. This platform is a scalable product in the telehealth category which allows doctors to remotely visit their patients through video communications for consultation.
    • In 2017, Zoom Video Communications announced a partnership with Polycom. This partnership integrated Zoom’s video meetings into the partnered company, Polycom’s conferencing systems and enabled a wide array of features that included multiple screens and device meetings, HD and wireless screen sharing, and calendar integration with Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, and iCal.
    • In March 2020, NextTech AR Solutions acquired a software company named Jolokia. Through this acquisition, it intends to integrate Zoom into Jolokia’s Inferno platform. The highlight is that this integration will allow Zoom Video meetings to support up to 100,000 participants. Not just that, with added and advanced features like “real-time Q&A Plus immersive AR.” and additional features like the ability to start a Zoom meeting from the Inferno platform and the incorporation of closed captioning in 64 languages to meeting recordings.
    • Very recently, in May 2020, Zoom acquired Keybase. Keybase offers end-to-end encrypted chat, file-sharing, and code-hosting all based on a cryptographic platform.
    • Zoom has acquired German startup Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions (KITES) on June 30, 2021. The company’s acquisition would bring in the knowledge of language translation via machine learning and is deemed to be a step forward to break the language barriers and speed up the work across the organizations the world over.

    Zoom – Funding and Investors

    Zoom has raised a total of $276 Million in funding over 8 rounds. Their latest funding was raised in January 2017 from a Series D round.

    Here is a list of all the funding rounds of Zoom:

    Date Stage Amount Investors
    November 2021 Post IPO Equity $130 Million ARK Investment Management
    January 2017 Series D $100 million Sequoia Capital, Emergence Capital Partners
    February 2015 Series C $30 million Emergence Capital Partners, Horizons Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures
    September 2013 Series B $6.5 million Horizons Ventures, Jerry Yang, Patrick Soon-Shiong
    January 2013 Series A $6 million Qualcomm Ventures, Jerry Yang
    June 2011 Seed Round $3 million TEEC Angel Fund, Michael Everett, Matt Ocko
    February 2010 Pre Seed Round $500K –

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    Zoom – Valuation

    The Zoom valuation is currently at $9.2 billion. It raised a total of $751 million at IPO.

    Zoom – Competitors

    There are several online video conferencing services available.

    Top competitors of Zoom are:

    Zoom – Challenges Faced

    With all this extra attention, Zoom is now facing a huge privacy and security backlash as security experts, privacy advocates, lawmakers, and even the FBI warn that Zoom’s default settings aren’t secure enough. Zoom now risks becoming a victim of its own success.

    Zoom has battled security and privacy concerns before. Apple was forced to step in and silently remove Zoom software from Macs last year after a serious security vulnerability let websites hijack Mac cameras. In recent weeks, scrutiny over Zoom’s security practices has intensified, with a lot of the concern focused on its default settings and the mechanisms that make the app so easy to use.

    Each Zoom call has a randomly generated ID number between 9 and 11 digits long that’s used by participants to gain access to a meeting. Researchers have found that these meeting IDs are easy to guess, allowing anyone to get into meetings.

    While Zoom still states on its website that you can “secure a meeting with end-to-end encryption,” the company was forced to admit it’s actually misleading people. “It is not possible to enable E2E encryption for Zoom video meetings,” said a Zoom spokesperson in a statement.

    Zoom – Future Plans

    During the vision keynote of Zoomtopia 2020, Zoom Video Communications, Inc. unveiled major developments to its platform that evolve the future of communications.

    OnZoom: A one-of-a-kind online event platform for Zoom users to create and host free, paid, and fundraising events. Hosts can grow their businesses, expand their reach into new audiences, and give back through native donation integration. Zoom users can discover these events and sign up for new experiences with additional functionality like gifting tickets and an attendee dashboard to keep tabs on favorite events and brands.

    New end-to-end encryption (E2EE) offering: This optional feature will be generally available in technical preview to free and paid Zoom users next week. It can be enabled at the account, group, and user level, and, depending on how the account admin sets up the feature, can be toggled on and off by the host on a by-meeting basis. When enabled, Zoom’s E2EE ensures that communication between meeting participants using Zoom applications is encrypted using cryptographic keys known only to the devices of those participants.

    Customizable SDK: Zoom is adding new enhancements to its SDKs, enabling developers and companies to enrich their own custom video-based applications with Zoom’s platform, available now on Android, iOS, and web. Developers can take advantage of a customizable UI and session control, making it easier for them to bring high-quality video, audio, and instant chat to their applications.

    Zapps: Zapps enable developers to create apps that power workflows before, during, and after the meeting. Zoom has brought first and third-party developed apps into the meeting experience for real-time adoption. Zapps are designed to give developers a fast and flexible web view canvas to create apps, viral distribution, and IT deployment and manageability.

    FAQs

    Is Zoom free?

    The basic plan for Zoom is free for all with no trial period.

    Who is the owner of Zoom?

    Eric S. Yuan is the owner of Zoom. He founded Zoom in 2011 in San Jose, California, United States.

    Who’s the CEO of Zoom?

    Eric Yuan is the CEO of Zoom.

    How does Zoom make money?

    The business model of Zoom is built on charging businesses a reoccurring subscription fee for the various products the company offers. On top of that, Zoom makes money from the promotion of hardware products.

    What are the competitors of Zoom?

    Top competitors of Zoom are:

    • Cisco WebEx Meetings
    • GoToMeeting
    • Google Hangouts Meet
    • BlueJeans Meetings
    • Skype
    • Webex
    • Slack
    • Adobe Connect

  • The Massive Growth Of Zoom During COVID-19

    Zoom is a cloud-based video conferencing service you can use to interact with others—either video, audio, or both—with the facility to chat as well. Zoom lets you record sessions so that you can watch it later. Several organizations use Zoom and the adoption of the video conferencing app has increased manifold.

    When people talk about Zoom, it’s common to hear phrases like Zoom cloud meetings and Zoom rooms. Zoom cloud meeting refers to a video conferencing session hosted on the service. You can attend these meetings via a laptop, tablet, or a phone. A Zoom room is a physical hardware setup that lets companies schedule and launch Zoom cloud meetings from their conference rooms.

    Zoom’s Explosive Growth
    Services Provided By Zoom
    Revenue Generated By Zoom

    Zoom Logo
    Zoom Logo

    Zoom’s Explosive Growth

    Zoom beat its own revenue estimates as well as analysts’ forecasts, recording a 169% increase in its first quarter earnings of 2020. $122 million in revenue jumped to $ 328.2 million.

    Google Meet | What is it? | What is the AI Noise Cancellation System?
    Google Meet. What is Google Meet? What is the AI Noise Cancellation Feature of Google Meet?
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    The company, a major beneficiary of the Covid-19 epidemic with almost no other competitor, nearly doubled its revenue guidance for the fiscal year. It now expects to fetch between $ 1.7 billion to $ 1.8 billion.

    Services Provided By Zoom

    Zoom Core Business

    The core of Zoom’s business is video conferencing, webinars, and collaboration tools. To deal with the proliferation of Covid-19 in countries across the globe that brought in millions of new users overnight, Zoom had to scale its infrastructure considerably. With customers and organizations also looking to alternatives like Microsoft Teams, Zoom now had intense competition.

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    Net profit came in at $27 million, compared with $200,000 in the same quarter a year ago. According to Zoom, the revenue from new customers increased by about 71%. There was a 354% year on year increase in the number of zoom customers (organizations with more than 10 employees). The number of daily meeting participants on Zoom was 300 million in April 2020, compared to 10 million in December 2019. The gross margin of Zoom came down from 82.7% in the previous quarter to 68.4% in this quarter. It was 80.2% in the same quarter last year.

    Zoom Cloud Meeting Tips

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    Revenue Generated By Zoom

    The United States accounted for 74.9% of Zoom’s revenue in the quarter, while Europe accounted for 15.6% of revenue. 9.5% was from the Asia Pacific region and the remaining from Middle East and Africa. The company’s rapid growth exposed several security gaps in its software, prompting Zoom In to announce a 90-day security plan and discontinue all product updates.

    The company also acquired encryption startup Keybase and announced that it will offer improved encryption for paid customers. During the earnings call, Eric Yuan, Zoom’s chief executive, indicated that the company won’t charge additional fees for end-to-end encryption in the future but won’t make it part of the free software.

    While large companies such as Google and governments, including the Indian government, have advised against using Zoom for official purposes, the company continues to expand. The company said chip giant ARM and international law firm Baker McKenzie entered its client base during the epidemic. The company has not just beat analyst expectations on revenue; it has also responded to critics who wondered whether the company would be able to maintain its valuation in terms of earnings.

  • Say Namaste- An Indian Alternative Conferencing Platform for the Apps like ‘Zoom’

    The COVID-19 pandemic has become a big problem for all the people of the world. This has led to the situation that people are not able to go outside not even for earning money for their basic livelihood due to complete global lockdown. The govt. has asked the people to work from home. In order to work in this lockdown situation, the people are using different online conference platforms, which are able to connect all the employees together at their respective houses.

    One of the successful app in this lockdown situation is the ‘Zoom app’, which is used by the people, the most in this stressful situation. But due to many privacy problems, the app is able to create problems for itself by just creating many alternative for itself. One of such platform, which have gained popularity because of this Zoom problems is the ‘Say Namaste‘ conferencing platform. Let us discuss in detail about it.

    Working USP of Say Namaste Platform

    Say Namaste- An alternative of Zoom app.
    Say Namaste– An alternative of Zoom app.

    ‘Say Namaste‘ is not actually an app, whereas it is an online tool or in other words an online platform which can be easily accessible through your trusted web browser. This conferencing platform is provided by a  private company based Mumbai named ‘Inscripts’ who has introduced ‘Say Namaste‘ video conferencing platform who got this opportunity after looking at cyber vulnerability in the very popular video conferencing app- Zoom app. ‘Say Namaste‘ is using open source techniques. These include making availability of end-to-end encryption like WhatsApp which works best with this service without affecting performance and any privacy concerns.

    Best Alternatives to Zoom App while Working Remotely
    The COVID-19 pandemic [https://startuptalky.com/tag/coronavirus/] has madegovernments across the world to take measures to contain the spread ofcoronavirus. Many governments have implemented lockdown. So almost all thecompanies are asking their employees to stay home and work remotely as much as…
    StartupTalky – Your Entrepreneurial Journey Starts Here!Varad Kitey

    Say Namaste- An alternative of Zoom app.

    The ‘Say Namaste‘ platform is also backed by the Indian Government cautioned also cautioned the cyber and privacy problems against the use of the popular video calling app Zoom. The video conferencing platform- ‘Say Namaste‘ is currently available in Beta mode and is going under all the test to make the platform more secure to use without any tension of any privacy and other cyber problems.

    Key Differentiating Points of Say Namaste Platform

    Say Namaste- A Privacy Protected Platform
    Say Namaste– A Privacy Protected Platform

    On giving interview to a channel, the CEO of the company says that he doesn’t wants to work like “an all-purpose communications suite” but focus on highly interactive and easy to use interface who can be easily used by their customers.

    The use of ‘Say Namaste‘ platform is highly easily as any user for now, just needs to create a meeting link using a randomly generated 10-digit ID and four-digit password and other users can join the session without any problem with the help of meeting link. Like the feature in Zoom, there is no ‘waiting room’ and on a single moment of time only one person can joins the meeting one by one.

    Try these Zoom Settings to Protect Your Privacy and Avoid Zoombombing Trolls
    Zoom, a cloud-based meeting platform, is making into headlines almost everyday.The video-conferencing software[https://startuptalky.com/tag/video-conferencing-tools/] has been gainingattention from researchers and journalists lately for a number of potentialprivacy and security issues. The use o…
    StartupTalky – Your Entrepreneurial Journey Starts Here!Varad Kitey

    Say Namaste- A Privacy Protected Platform

    At the present moment, ‘Say Namaste‘ can support 25 callers at once but the company’s aim is to reach 100 callers limit per session. Besides video-calling, the platform also supports screen sharing, file sharing and text chats i.e. all the features which are supported by all the well-known conferencing apps for making an all-in-one multi-utility app. Anuj Garg, the co-founder and the CEO of Inscripts says that ‘Say Namaste‘ app is still under ta testing and has garnered over 500,000 users within a few days and they will be able to provide the stable version within a upcoming small portion of time.

  • Try these Zoom Settings to Protect Your Privacy and Avoid Zoombombing Trolls

    Zoom, a cloud-based meeting platform, is making into headlines almost everyday. The video-conferencing software has been gaining attention from researchers and journalists lately for a number of potential privacy and security issues. The use of the platform has seen a boom in usage due to increase in coronavirus related remote working. One of the biggest security issues facing Zoom is the increase in “Zoombombing” when uninvited attendees break into and disrupt your meeting.

    Zoom is huge these days. The cloud-based meeting platform lets you arrange virtual conferences with video, audio and screen-sharing options. It is a great way to continue conducting business when so many people have to work from home. Ever since rising into popularity, Zoom found itself bombarded by reports of privacy and security issues.

    In the wake of COVID-19, people have rushed to the video chat platform due to stay-at-home orders and lockdown. People are massively using Zoom app as their employer or school requires it and to stay in touch with friends and family. But journalists, researchers and regulators have noticed its many security and privacy problems. Zoom will have to follow its security and privacy promises if it wants to regain users’ trust.

    Government of India has also released the notice eventually regarding controversy-ridden video conferencing platform Zoom. The Ministry of Home Affairs on April 16, put out a detailed two-page long advisory for Zoom users in India and stated that the video conferencing platform Zoom is unsafe. They have also urged people to protect their virtual meetings from Zoombombing phenomenon where pranksters join Zoom calls and broadcast porn or shock videos.

    Zoom has had a rough few weeks. These further led many to quit the platform and cyber security experts to issue advisories. Thankfully, Zoom itself appeared to take matters seriously, roping in key cyber security faces such as ex-Facebook security head Alex Stamos, and more recently Katie Moussouris of the Pentagon bug bounty fame.

    What are Steps being taken by Zoom?

    Zoom is clearly responding quickly to the issues that have been raised. There are still more issues to address and improvements required, but 20 days after Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan promised changes, we’re now starting to see exactly how Zoom is responding.

    Zoom has released a new Zoom 5.0 update designed to address some of the many complaints that Zoom has faced in recent weeks. With this new update, there’s now a security icon that offers a number of Zoom’s security features. It can be to quickly lock meetings, remove participants, and restrict screen sharing and chatting in meetings.

    Zoom is also now enabling passwords by default for most customers. IT admins can now define the password complexity for Zoom business users. Zoom’s waiting room feature is also now on by default for basic, single-license Pro and education accounts. This feature allows a host to hold participants in a virtual room before they’re allowed into a meeting.

    Zoom is also improving some of its encryption and upgrading to the AES 256-bit GCM encryption standard. It is an improvement for the transmission of meeting data. Business customers can also control which data center regions will handle meeting traffic for their Zoom meetings after concerns were raised that some meetings were being routed through servers in China.

    Read More: Alternatives to Zoom App while Working Remotely

    Steps to be Followed

    After all of these improvements from Zoom, there are certain steps which one needs to follow to ensure privacy and safety from user’s end. In the meantime, one must take these steps to increase the Zoom privacy settings and protect meetings from Zoombombing trolls.

    Change your background

    The space you’re in during a call can expose a lot of information about where you live, your habits, and your hobbies. One can set a virtual background like beach, outer space or anywhere else you can imagine by customizing your background while on Zoom calls.

    One can set a virtual background by following the below steps. For this,  go to Settings > Virtual Background and select or upload the image you want from there. However, you do have to make sure that your system meets all of the requirements to do so.

    Zoom Virtual Background
    One must Set Virtual Background Image

    Make Sure Chat Auto-Saving Is Off

    Zoom has a feature that saves the chat automatically. One must check if Auto saving is ON or OFF. In your Zoom account settings, under In Meeting, make sure Auto saving chats is toggled off to the left.

    Mute your Audio and Turn off your Camera by default

    In most of the meetings, not everyone needs to have their camera ON. While scheduling a meeting, host can mute audio and camera buttons by default. To do it, go to Settings > Audio > Mute microphone when joining a meeting, and then Settings > Video > Turn off my video when joining or hosting a meeting.

    Lock Down Screen Sharing

    In your Zoom account settings under In Meeting (Basic), set Screen sharing to Host Only. This means, when you are hosting a meeting, only you(host) can share their screen. No other meeting participants will be able to share their screen.

    Depending on the calls you plan to host, you can also turn screen sharing off entirely by toggling it off to the left.

    Make Sure Attention Tracking is Off

    In your Zoom account settings under In Meeting (Advanced), make sure Attention tracking is toggled off to the left. The attention tracking setting toggled off to the left

    Keep the Meeting ID Private

    One of the reasons why privacy issues arose is that many people posted the meeting link on their social media groups. Thus, whenever possible, do not post the link to your meeting or the meeting ID publicly. Send it directly to trusted people and groups instead.

    After Zoom’s most recent update, meeting passwords are now on by default for free Basic and single licensed Pro accounts as well as education accounts. But Zoom passwords can behave in unexpected ways. If you use the “Copy Invitation” functionality to copy the meeting link and send it to your participants, that link might include your meeting password.

    If you send the meeting link directly to trusted participants, having the password included in the link will be no problem. But if you post the meeting link in a Facebook group, on Twitter or in another public space, then it means the password itself will also be public. So while copying the invitation link, passwords must be deleted to have privacy. It advisable to set a password and inspect the Meeting Link carefully before sending the link.

    To find the password settings, go to your Zoom account settings under Schedule Meeting. Make sure Require a password when scheduling new meetings is toggled on to the right. You’ll find additional password options in this area of the settings as well.

    Use Waiting Rooms to Approve Participants

    This is the best way to monitor who joins the meeting. After Zoom’s most recent update, waiting rooms are now enabled by default. A waiting room allows hosts to screen new participants before letting them join which can help prevent disruptions or unexpected participants.

    To find this setting, go to your Zoom account settings > In Meeting (Advanced). Make sure Waiting room is toggled on to the right.

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    Lock the Meeting

    Last but not the least, this feature has to be used. When everyone has joined the meeting and all your expected participants have arrived, you can lock the meeting to prevent anyone else from joining. For this, at the bottom of the Zoom window, click Participants and select Lock Meeting.