After a successful trial in China, Alibaba has launched DingTalk, an enterprise communication platform in the English version in India.
With DingTalk, you can plan meetings and assign tasks to others. DingTalk claims that its platform is used by over 3 million business organizations. The app supports text, voice messages, translations, name cards, DINGs, images, video clips, check-ins, emails, audio/video conference for up to 3,000 parties in a single call. However, currently, for users outside China, voice and video services are available only via Voice over Internet Protocol. With DingTalk, organisations which have their offices located in different locations can communicate seamlessly, thereby improving productivity. Businesses can manage attendance, make approvals, maintain business reports and send files of up to 700MB in size.
After its launch in 2015, this is company’s first major step for expansion outside China. Its English version is also available in Malaysia. By March 2018, it is hoping for a substantial increase in its user count in India and Malaysia.
The app is available on all major operating systems including iOS, Android, Mac and Windows. Once the app is installed, you get up to 100GB of storage absolutely free. You can also integrate it with several third-party SaaS applications which is particularly helpful for providing an enterprise service ecosystem for SMEs.
Since its inception in 2014, one of its major competitors, Slack has raised around $500 million, pushing its valuation to $3.28 billion. Its other competitors include Amazon Chime, Flock, Workplace by Facebook.
In July last year, Microsoft launched communication and work management app Kaizala whose first adopter was Niti Aayog. It is actively used by more than 30 government departments and over 70,000 users in Andhra Pradesh. In September 2017, Bengaluru based B2B mobility startup Noticeboard raked up an undisclosed amount of funding from former Myntra CTO Shamik Sharma and TaxiForSure co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna, following which, both Sharma and Radhakrishna came on company’s board as advisors.