Jajah came to spotlight a few years ago and since their early launch have been extremely successfully in creating marketing buzz. Definitely enough to get massive funding and now a buyout deal.
Jajah intially launched as a Free Calling Service created massive media buzz since it was one of the first free international call service launched. Jajah became popular thanks to first mover advanage. Soon, they realised that you can't burn VC's money so fast that you need to ask for more funding every quarter. However by then Jajah had millions of users which they can now hope to convert into paid users. We don't know the numbers but i believe about 5% users might have converted into paid customers from free users which is still not bad considering its popularity.
Jajah in the mean time, kept pushing its brand via media awareness, press releases. At once, I remember Jajah released press releases almost every week some of they were prolly not so "News worthy". However, we must note that Jajah was perhaps the only and most successful VOIP venture next to GrandCentral who managed to get significant funding and now a solid buyout deal.
Jajah also raise many eyebrows when they taken over the Yahoo Voice platform and its userbase. A significant move in terms of expansion and improving its brand.
O2 finally snatched Jajah for $200 million dollars. This indicates 2 things, VOIP hold massive potential in the long run and Mobile operators have realised that VOIP could crush their earnings, so why not join the party and get the fair share.
However, Its important to note that not all VOIP Providers will get $200 millions. Jajah was special in many ways and i think they are worth the price. However, Honestly Jajah doesn't anymore provide cheap international call service, there are many VOIP Provider in the world who are cheaper than Jajah. However, Brand value and perception can sell anything, so why not a costly "Cheap VOIP service". Sure they are people who are ready to premium just to use Jajah. Guess O2 won't bother much :-)
0 comments:
Post a Comment