Deal Radar 2008: Dimdim

Dimdim is a web-based conferencing service. Unlike other online conference platforms, Dimdim does not require users to download any client – a big win over the competing offerings from WebEx, Adobe, and GoToMeeting.

Founded in 2006, Dimdim was the result of the frustrations that the founders—DD Ganguly, Prakash Khot, Jayant Pandit, Saurav Mohapatra, Sundar Subramanian and Rohit Shankar—faced trying to keep in touch with colleagues who were geographically dispersed. Launched as an open source platform, the company became a commercial entity when the founders realized the need for a change in web conferencing. Dimdim re-launched in September 2007 to facilitate communication and collaboration among people using various media. The company is based out of Burlington, Massachusetts and has offices in New Hampshire, Canada and Hyderabad, India.

Based on the same concepts as WebEx, the company provides the necessary tools for a web conference including a collaborative whiteboard, desktop sharing, audio, and video. In August 2008, the company released the Dimdim 4.0 version of its software with enhanced features that include recording, and private meeting and multiple presenter capabilities. DimDim, one might say, is WebEx 2.0 with advances in rich media and real-time collaboration functionality.

The company offers three products: Dimdim Free, Dimdim Pro and Dimdim Enterprise. Dimdim Free has two editions, open source community and free hosting.

Dimdim Pro has been priced at $99 a year and is highly scalable, while the Enterprise version starts at $2,000 a year. Though the Free version is free for front-end customers, Dimdim gets a share in the revenue from the service providers. The company is also exploring the possibility of revenue from advertisements in the free version. Its current customers range from individuals to small and medium enterprises to large enterprises. The company also has some academic institutions and non-profit organizations subscribing to its products. With competitive pricing that is 30% lower than that of its closest competitor, WebEx, Dimdim is slowly increasing its market share and has grown 792% y-o-y.

Dimdim has raised nearly $9 million so far: a $2.4 million Series A from Draper Richards, Index Ventures and Nexus India Capital in January 2007 and a $6 million Series B from these same investors.

As I said in yesterday’s Telanetix post, gratuitous business trips should go away. And yet, collaboration needs to increase. Only online solutions can meet the double goal of doing away with the painful, unpleasant, inefficient, environmentally damaging business travel phenomenon, while also escalating the volume, intensity and efficiency of collaboration needed from globally dispersed teams working together.

This segment is a part in the series : Deal Radar 2008