India and the world are facing a crisis like never before, worse than World War 2. While the world war was fought by armies on two sides (Allied and Axis powers) engaged in war , the coronavirus pandemic has put each and every person in the world on the front lines, left to fend for themselves and fight for survival.
In these times, we at Vidphon and I personally feel a great sense of responsibility to do our bit to empower people and businesses to navigate this crisis. As many of you may be aware, our team has worked long and hard for a few years to pioneer secure video conferencing. Starting with India’s first video chat app, Livewire, launched 2 months before Google Duo and 6 months before WhatsApp video chat, we went on to build Vidphon – a secure video communications platform to enable businesses of all sizes, all over the world.
After a year in private beta, Vidphon is now available to the public. There are 4 key pillars around which Vidphon is built, that makes it stand out from the existing Video Conferencing solutions available globally –
- Secure by design – Vidphon is available as a browser based solution, which means the moment you close your video conference and the browser tab, you are off, no 2 ways about it! Vidphon 1 to 1 calls are completely Peer to Peer(P2P) which ensure no intermediary servers and are fully encrypted, which gives little scope for interception by malicious servers or bad actors. Most other video conferencing solutions also require you to download their software/app/client which is the root cause for snooping and the possibility of processing information even after you are done with your video call.
- Ease of Use – Why are phone calls so ubiquitous, and not video calls? One of the reasons is a permanent phone number, to which anyone from any network can communicate freely. But with video conferencing applications, both users are compelled to be on the same application, which is forceful and limiting. With Vidphon, one click and you are on your way! Say goodbye to downloading software with Vidphon. Just enter the Vidphon address (URL) and seamlessly attend meetings and webinars as easily as opening up a web page. This allows anyone, anywhere to connect at anytime!
- Full Suite platform – Video conferencing alone will not change the game! To enable the new normal, which is remote work, video communications needs to be seamlessly integrated into specific business workflows and processes. This requires integrations, appointment scheduling, and SDKs that can be easily coupled with existing sales, support and marketing processes. Vidphon provides the necessary features that enables the rise of new Digital Business Models.
- Cost – Our mission has been to democratise Video communications, and a fundamental necessity is to keep the price point low and affordable for mass adoption. While free tools may be available, remember that whenever the product is free, the users are the product! Also free tools come with severe limitations(time and feature restrictions) which simply do not make the cut, when it comes to conducting businesses effectively. Many people and businesses may have a single paid license, and many free licenses for most employees, leading to vulnerabilities in performance and security. Video communication should cost as much as voice communication. We are the most affordable video conferencing solution on the planet. Period. And we will always strive to be!
All this said, we must confess that we are a small but passionate team, armed with our idealism. While large incumbent companies are backed by hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of employees, our strength lies in our integrity along the support of our users.
Lets co-create the future together!
Towards a new way of doing business.