Mesibo’s cloud communication platform could be the future of enterprise messaging
Bengaluru-based Mesibo is a cloud communication platform that lets developers add real-time chat, voice, and video to apps and websites, in quick time.
What if you could do a secure video call with the person delivering the food or book you ordered through an app? Imagine a scenario where employees of enterprises could communicate with each other through a secure app-based telephony channel, much like Slack, CometChat, and Sendbird. And what if this solution was made in India and specific to app developers in Asia?
Yusuf Motiwala, 46, made it happen with Mesibo, a cloud communication platform lets you build real-time chat, voice, and video in your mobile apps, and websites. Yusuf, who worked in several medium-sized technology businesses in the Bay Area for almost 15 years as a software engineer, returned to India to start up in 2007.
Getting started
Yusuf was mentoring an Indian healthcare startup four years ago when he realised that managing the security of health records was very important. While consulting, he surmised that the records needed to be encrypted and kept inside hospital servers. Simultaneously, he had also built a startup called TringMe – a cloud telephony business – where the company’s cloud platform handled over 16 million customers to communicate over messaging, voice, and video.
In April 2018, Yusuf combined the best of cloud and security for real-time messaging and founded Bengaluru-based Mesibo. Mesibo enables internet-connected devices, such as mobiles, handheld, websites, or IoT devices, to add industrial-strength, real-time messaging, voice, and video calling using its powerful API and SDK.
“Mesibo takes the mess out of messaging by offering a fully customisable open platform for highly secured peer-to-peer and encrypted communication. It allows businesses to build seamless communication interfaces into all internet-connected devices,” Yusuf says.
Whether you are developing telemedicine or customer support, AI powered chat bots, multiplayer games, ride sharing apps, dating apps, or CRM, Mesibo integrates real-time communication in your app.
According to E&Y, the global app market is growing at a CAGR of 15 percent and is estimated to exceed $300 billion by 2024. As many as 80 percent of these applications need real-time communication. Before Mesibo, developers had only two choices when adding communication abilities to an app: either sign up with exorbitantly priced subscription services or design a resource-intensive custom solution.
The technology
Mesibo provides an app with open source APIs and UI, and voice and video calling with end-to-end encryption. For startups, incorporating open source-tested, scalable WhatsApp-like features allows them to scale up and communicate with customers faster.
Enterprise customers can leverage these capabilities of Mesibo’s platform by downloading its SDK and copy-pasting a few lines of code from the SDK to their own app. In just a few hours, the app will be enabled with real-time messaging/chat, voice, or video calls.
For example, if a business is developing a dating application, it only needs to focus on the dating algorithm and leave the communication responsibility to Mesibo.
“The enterprises can focus on their skills and easily integrate these encrypted messaging services,” Yusuf says.
The Mesibo platform works on public and private clouds, and helps enterprises build personal communication. Customer support, banking, telemedicine, CRM, and dating are a few examples of the sectors enterprises/startups can leverage the scale, quality, and reliability of Mesibo's platform.
Significant traction
Since its formal launch in August 2018, Mesibo has got significant traction from the developer community. As many as 177 pilots are being developed on the platform right now. The startup is also in discussions with customers in the telco, hospital, and banking industries to build a paid customised solution to provide unified communication across all connected platforms in their premises.
The 30-member Mesibo team has worked with big names, including Stanford, Alcatel-Lucent, Aricent, IBM, Infosys, Texas Instruments, and Viacom.
Mesibo’s business model is unique. Unlike traditional services that ask to choose from one of a few pre-decided plans, Mesibo’s charges are based on the platform resources used by the app. Developers can start developing and even deploying their Mesibo-powered apps for free. However, once they cross the limit of free plan, they need to switch to the “PAYG” plan, subject to a minimum monthly commitment of US$ 49. The six-month-old company refused to disclose revenues.
The company has also created a revenue share model with developers when they launch their services with the Mesibo-encrypted messaging service. Developers will be encouraged to create Mesibo-based solutions to generate additional revenue.
Competition in India comes in the form of Kaleyra ; abroad, it is from Slack and Comechat.
In the future, Mesibo plans to establish customers across geographies and industries. It aims to leverage successful use cases to expand business across the board; their main geographic focus at the moment is the US, Europe, and Latin America. The company is currently self-funded.
V Ganapathy, of Axilor Ventures, says: “These companies have to build enterprise technology and scale up.”
That’s just what Mesibo has in mind.