WhatsApp isn’t safe enough for business messaging; Avaamo fills the gap

Before turning entrepreneurs, Ram Menon and Sriram Chakravarthy worked for TIBCO, an enterprise communication software company. During their stint there, they built a product called Tibbr, an enterprise communication app that competed with Yammer and Chatter. This gave them a first-hand experience in understanding how people use communication apps in their professional lives. A clear drawback was that these apps were primarily desktop based. The apps did not have the elements of ease that people look for while communicating on mobile. This became more apparent as Menon and Chakravarthy noticed the big shift to mobile in the last five years. That inspired the duo to co-found Avaamo.

“After seeing the trends in consumer messaging apps, we realized that there was an inherent value proposition in the simplicity of mobile apps,” Chakravarthy tells Tech in Asia. The main points that Chakravarthy and Menon worked on, from the consumer point of view, were how quickly the app could be downloaded, how easily it could be maneuvered, and how to ensure minimum response time during communication. From an enterprise point of view, the main elements were security and data privacy.

Chakravarthy cites the example of a real estate company in Bangalore which uses WhatsApp to communicate with the real estate agents through groups. These are not secure groups in terms of assessing the identity of the members. In the case where a member has left the company, an admin might not necessarily have remembered to remove him from the group. A lot of private and confidential information is exchanged in these groups and without centralized monitoring of members, the company might be compromising on its security and data privacy.

Eureka

Menon and Chakravarthy decided to tackle these challenges and incorporated Avaamo in 2014. The India-Silicon Valley based startup, provides enterprises a secure and an easily supervisable communication app. The app has both free as well as paid versions. The free one works like Whatsapp and the user can add members and send unlimited messages. The paid version provides data compliance, automated user on & off boarding, broadcast to company users, support and administrator control. An enterprise administrator can install the Avaamo web app and control messaging and communication through a dashboard.

The pricing for the premium app is for enterprises and varies with the size of the enterprise and number of employees

AN administrator can create a list of members, monitor the daily user activity on the app, and manage the groups. The groups can be predefined for departments and can also be created by employees according to their convenience. An employee can download the free version and keep in touch with the company for their daily tasks. The administrator can decide the amount of time to keep the data before it gets deleted automatically.

“The app has fine-grained controls that will ensure that only the right people join,” says Chakravarthy.

For the mobile employees

There are several applications available to companies for enterprise communication in India. Skype for Business, Slack, and Flowdock, among many others, address the problem of being in touch with employees across all offices and branches a company might have. When asked about the well-rooted competition, Chakravarthy said, “These apps are great, but for the desk-bound employees. But for example, in an insurance company, if the manager wants to get in touch with an agent riding a moped on a hill in Shillong, he can’t reach him with Slack, because the agent is on WhatsApp.” According to Chakravarthy, people using their mobile phones 70 percent of the day lack an enterprise grade communication system that is easy to use. “Avaamo bridges this gap in an under-served market,” he claims.

Avaamo has 7,000 companies on board out of which, 3,000 are Indian companies – mostly insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, and banks. “We focus on companies that have more employees on their mobile phones and provide a secure and easy communication platform on cheap Android phones,” adds Chakravarthy.

Messaging 3.0