Video Streaming Done Better With Jigsee [INTERVIEW]

Ray Newal, the CEO and president of Jigsee, sees his video streaming venture as an opportunity to help half of India’s population catch up on media and entertainment they have historically missed out on due to lack of PCs, broadband, and television.

His experience in the internet space working with companies like DoubleClick, Microsoft, and Yahoo should come in handy. Jigsee has unique features like smooth streaming and compatibility with Java-enabled phones. It works on any network – 2G (GPRS), 3G, 4G, and WiFi. On phones that support automatic switching between networks (for example: GPRS to 3G), Jigsee streams will play continuously without stopping. In a conversation with Penn Olson, Ray shared his plans for the minty fresh Jigsee beta:

What is the main idea behind Jigsee? How did you and Areef come up with it?

The main idea behind Jigsee is to bring access and discovery of video content to the billions who use feature phones and can now afford GPRS to access the web on them. We help provide smooth video streaming even at slow speeds.

I started Jigsee in 2007. While on a backpacking trip in India I realized that the impact of the Internet had yet to be felt in the places that stood to benefit the most. In 2009, I met Areef Reza and, as I got to know him, I realized that he brought an engineering perspective to a tangential issue – helping the local population gain access to produced video content which was being hampered because of many factors. These people did not have PCs or broadband, but they stood to gain the most from access to content.

Delivering continuous video on wireless networks with data rates as low as 50 kbps. How do you do that?

When developing for feature phones we had to consider the limitations of the device: limited memory, limited processing power, limited battery life, and very limited screen size. With these limitations in mind, our focus is on making efficient use of the native capabilities of the device. Our strength lies in network optimization. As a team we understand how to make information flow through a constrained network more efficiently. This core competency in network data flow forms the underlying thread of Jigsee’s
technology.

How many users have Jigsee on their phones as of now? And, how many of them are using it on a daily basis?

We launched Jigsee Beta in mid August 2011. Jigsee is now available for free
download at our website and at half a dozen app stores, including on
the Appia (Opera Mobile Store, Mobile2day, Zedge) store, Airtel, Getjar, Ovi and Tata Docomo. While it’s early days, we’re seeing thousands of downloads a day across these various app stores. About 10 percent of our users visit every day to play video, and on average stream between 4 and 5 minutes of video a day.