 "Mobile broadcasting platform YakSee launches its services in India")
The company, which is supported by Google Cloud Platform, would be looking at fund raising once the user base crosses the 4,000-5,000 mark, said Shah Talukder, chairman and CEO, YakSee, a former senior employee of Cisco. Google Cloud has extended a $100 K funding as data storage capacity to the California-based start-up, he said.
YakSee is an integrated platform that lets people connect using smartphones and tablets to create their own live broadcasts from anywhere in the world and could be broadcasted to a large number of audience. The broadcaster could also interact with the audience and project videos and audio through the platform.
"We have been working on YakSee for past several years and have a good technology product, a team now. Around 585 people are currently using the platform and it would grow to around 3,000 or above once we launch the product with Great Lakes Institute of Management. We will look at raising funds once we have more people using it," said Talukder. It has been launched in Bangladesh and US and is in the Beta stage now.
It could be used for various purposes including talk radio as a medium for paid channel for entertainment or news. While there is a basic application currently available at Google Play Store, the revenue would be from its professional channels where some broadcast firms, establishments or even celebrity individuals and artists can run a channel on which the company would charge a per centage of the latter's revenue. Moreover, the ownership of the content will remain with the person who creates the content and not with the company, he added.
This would open up an opportunity for artists and musicians to broadcast their creation without transfering the ownership to another company, he said. YakSee is also looking at developing a set of APIs, through which individual companies can run their own broadcasting, he added. The iOS form of the platform is getting ready for launch.
However, the company would provide its platform for free for eductional purpose, especially in countries like India and Bangladesh. Through the platform, one could teach subjects like language to thousands of students sitting at two different countries in the world. In Bangladesh, the platform is already used to train poor children how to speak English, including the pronunciation, he said.
An official launch of the platform would take place on Saturday in Great Lake's Institute campus near Chennai and later would also be present in the Summit organised in Andhra Pradesh where the educational institution would be signing an MoU with the State government.
"If it is for eduction, especially to educate the poor, our service is free. We have developed the platform keeping in mind that it has to work in low bandwidth also. It would require a 3G connection to use the application," he said. He added that if the government really wants to help the poor and raise the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it should build on the network infrastructure to improve the bandwidth.