Enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce.com has acquired web conferencing firm Dimdim.comfor $31 million. Salesforce plans to use the acquisition to bring new real-time communication capabilities to its Chatter collaboration platform, mirroring the proven Facebook model of combining collaboration and communication into an integrated service.
“Facebook has fundamentally changed the way we communicate in our personal lives,” Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce.com, has said. “The acquisition of Dimdim will help Salesforce.com deliver to the enterprise the same integrated collaboration and communication experience that made Facebook the world’s most popular internet site.”
“From our start, Dimdim has focused on enabling real-time communication in the cloud, with no software,” DD Ganguly, CEO, Dimdim, has said. “Salesforce.com gives us the opportunity to apply our expertise and align our vision of real-time, social enterprise software in the cloud – at a scale that wouldn’t have been otherwise possible.”
Dimdim was founded in 2007 by DD Ganguly and Prakash Khot, with a focus on developing enterprise applications on a cloud-based communications platform. Its current offerings allow users to host or attend live online meetings, demos and webinars using a web browser. Dimdim’s investors include Draper Richards, Index Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners. Dimdim has offices in Lowell (US) and Hyderabad.
“We are very proud of what the Dimdim team has achieved in a very short time,” Suvir Sujan, co-founder, Nexus Venture Partners, has said. “This acquisition is also testament to the potential of Indian technology product companies’ ability to have a global impact. The acquisition is an important milestone for the Indian technology industry, which is witnessing a shift from services to products.”
