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Nickhil Jakatdar, a serial entrepreneur, has travelled widely across Indonesia, China, India and Mexico. It was during these sojourns, he realised that for many people in these countries, the mobile phone was their only screen.
This is in stark contrast as for the majority across the world, where mobile is the third screen after television and computer. This led to the birth of Vuclip, a mobile video and media start-up.
“I found that people were hooked on to their mobile phones. They did not seem to be talking on them but were texting or using it to access the internet. I soon realized the mobile device was their only access to the Internet. It wasn’t their second screen or even their first screen,” Jakatdar, who heads Vuclip as its Chief Executive Officer and Founder, said.
“The mobile revolution was exploding in these countries, and consumers wanted interesting content,” he said, reminiscing the birth of an idea, now a company whose services reach 80 million people a month across 190 countries, added.
Vuclip was started with intention to provide un-buffered video services on mobile across the emerging markets. (The system downloading a certain amount of data for playing the music or movie is called buffering).
However, the intention had more than its fair share of challenges too.
“The technology and the experience needed to make video work on a mobile device are significantly different from what it takes to make video work on a desktop,” he said. That wasn’t the only challenge. These were markets where many could not afford high-end smartphones, had highly-fragmented mobile ecosystem (different devices, technology), poor bandwidth and networks and customers opting for capped data plans among others added to the woes.
THE START
“That is where we saw the opportunity… YouTube had seen huge success with video on desktop around 2006, but we recognised the world was headed toward mobile. The number of mobile devices will eventually reach 8.6 billion, surpassing the number of people on earth,” the 40-year-old added.
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Milpitas, California, Vuclip designed a technology to meet these challenges. Now, it can provide quality video on any mobile device in any country. The company’s services, unlike other video on mobile or internet, do not need ‘buffering’ (downloading certain amount of data before beginning to play a music or movie).
“For operators, our technology compresses video files down to as much as 20 per cent of its original size, leading to higher retention rates and more downloads. This also drives revenue for carriers,” he said. Vuclip also raised about $35 million in funding from SingTel Innov8, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the SingTel Group, and venture firms New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Jafco Ventures.
“We have been growing at about 200 per cent per annum over the last three years and are approaching double-digit millions in revenue,” Jakatdar said, adding Vuclip had recently touched 20-million user-mark in India. At present, Vuclip employs 130 personnel in New Delhi, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Dubai, Shenzhen, Beijing and Ottawa. The company has also created a mobile movie portal, Starlight Cinema, offering more than 9,000 movie clips in 13 Indian languages, Mira! (a mobile video channel for women), TV Shows (news, sports and education) among others.
“We are now the world’s largest independent mobile video and media company,” he adds.
OTHER VENTURES
The serial entrepreneur was born and raised in Pune and travelled to the U.S. for his Master’s and PhD at the University of California, Berkeley.
“At Berkeley and before completing my PhD, I founded my first start-up, Timbre Technologies,” Jakatdar said.
In 1998, he co-founded Timbre Technologies, a semiconductor manufacturing start-up through the first-ever Berkeley Business Plan competition. In 2001, it was sold to Tokyo Electron for $138 million. Then came Praesagus, an MIT-incubated start-up focused on chip design, and Jakatdar headed the company as it President and Chief Operating Officer. Praesagus was acquired by Cadence Design Systems for about $40 million in 2006.
In 2004, he founded CommandCAD, an electrical CAD company, which was later acquired by Cadence (details of this acquisition wasn’t made public). He has also co-founded the Bhau Institute of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Leadership, a non-profit organisation to support student entrepreneurs at the College of Engineering, Pune.
“The entrepreneurial journey is priceless in growing professionally and personally,” he said, adding, it’s about the team!
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