The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has made the entire world heavily reliant on the video conferencing tools to stay connected. This is where various platforms and apps such as Zoom, Skype, Facebook, WhatsApp and many others have stepped in to fill the void created by the social distancing measures that are put in place.
In a bid to make the most of the situation and Indian-origin startup has thrown their hat in the ring for the same. This new video conferencing platform is called Say Namaste and it has been developed by a Mumbai-based company known as Inscripts.
The video conferencing platform, launched only a few days ago, has claimed to have already amassed a whopping five lakhs (half a million users) by now. The company Inscripts has also mentioned that Say Namaste is currently adding roughly one lakh users per day.
This platform was launched shortly after the Indian Government called on all tech companies nationwide to develop a secure alternative to Zoom (because of its flaws in security and privacy) and declared prize money of Rs 1 crore to the winner.
Inscripts, while saying that they will most certainly be participating in this challenge initiated by the Indian Government, also mentioned that their app is still in the beta phase as of now. However, if one wishes to access the platform right away, then they can do so by accessing its web version from here.
Anuj and Anant Garg, the two co-founders of Inscripts that has launched Say Namaste, have mentioned that they have previously worked with several enterprise customers such as banks, medical services and so on. Therefore, “privacy and security are a part of Inscript’s DNA.”
According to them, all of Say Namaste’s data is encrypted with cryptographic standards such as the AES 256 bit encryption and TLS aka Transport Security Layer.
Say Namaste: Zoom Of India?
The popular video conferencing platform Zoom, which quickly rose to popularity amid the coronavirus outbreak. In just 3 months the user base of Zoom increased from just 10 million to 300 million. However, the platform got thrust into hot water due to its huge security and privacy issues. Consequently, it opened up a huge opportunity for other competitors to capture a sizeable share of the global video conferencing market, which is estimated worth $12 billion by 2027.
Therefore, soon after major tech giants such as Facebook, Skype and many more started remodelling and upgrading their existing video call offerings to match that of Zoom and launched them within a very short span of time.
Say Namaste might very well be able to do so in India but only on the privacy and security front as of right now. The co-founders of the Say Namaste platform have repeatedly stressed that they, at this moment, are not focusing much only scaling their platform, but only on security. They have also mentioned wanting a third-party audit done to especially make sure all their security protocols are in place.
Now, on the front of being feature-rich and highly robust, Inscript’s Say Namaste platform might take a lot of time to catch up to Zoom’s offerings. This is primarily because the Indian origin video conferencing app is still in its nascent stage and has a very long way to go.
Right now, the Say Namaste can only handle a video conferencing call with up to 25 participants which, compared to Zoom’s capability of doing the same with 100 participants with an addon of another 500, is way too small.
It remains to be seen what the future holds for this particular one of a kind Indian origin video conferencing app. Also, be it whatever, this is only the beginning of the video conferencing market worldwide busting wide open with numerous players big and small jumping in with unique and different offerings and add-ons. We will keep you posted on all future developments. Stay tuned.
