Indian startup Dyte selected for Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch

Dyte is an Indian video calling platform that allows you to integrate apps right into your video call. The Delhi-NCR-headquartered startup was founded in September 2020 and has been selected for Y Combinator – Winter 2021 batch. Presently, the co-founders work remotely, where Abhishek works out of Faridabad, Kushagra out of Haridwar, and Palash is based out of Rajasthan. 

Dyte has an in-house video calling stack built on top of WebRTC — one of the best technologies for video communication — that allows the team to customise and include additional features as and when needed. During calls, users can add a plug-in from the Dyte plug-in store by selecting the plug-ins button present on the bottom right of the call. Presently, it has a Google Drive and WhiteBoard as a plug-in, which simplifies the process of viewing the file by everyone present on the call and also gives an option to edit if they have access to the file. The start-up is planning to introduce Chess, Trello, Figma, and Miro Whiteboard.

This feature helps the user choose the required plug-in, which then gets started for everyone else present on the call. On Dyte, users can not only choose from pre-built plug-ins but also create their own set of plug-ins which will be tailor-made to meet their specific requirements. Nowadays, nearly all the online meetings end up being non-productive as most of the time users are watching a screen-share, and the process seems slow, laggy and non-interactive. 

“We wanted to make the process as seamless as possible, yet customisable. You can start a meeting with one click, but can also customise settings, including a waitlist, invite-only, password protection for a meeting, mute participants on entry, etc. But, for most of the quick calls, you don’t need these, and we feel, you shouldn’t have to deal with them,” Abhishek stated. “We feel that video calls need to be more than what they are right now. You should be able to collaborate right in a call rather than having to move between multiple tabs or even have back and forth meetings for the tiniest things. We help overcome this with a plug-in approach. For example, if you need to have a sprint planning meeting, you can just add a Trello instance to the call and everyone can add their tasks to it right away. This makes such calls more productive. We’re also a purely Indian replacement to video platforms like Zoom.” he added.

At present, Dyte is in its pre-revenue stage. It plans to launch the Beta version of the application to an initial set of customers and subsequently, work on the feedback received from them. The startup plans to onboard developers on its “Dyte Developer Programme” to build their plug-ins and make it available to the users.  “Our primary focus is India and the Indian startups in the first phase, and we plan to become the default app used for collaborative meetings, team stand-ups, as well as quick catchup with friends,” says Abhishek. 

Competitors like Airmeet has recently raised $3 million in funding to push its offerings in the aftermath of the pandemic that forced widespread event cancellations. Numerous other startups have also entered the video calling space, and US-based Zoom has seen 30X growth in users since the pandemic began. Other players like Google Meet, GoToMeeting, VideoMeet, Jitsi Meet, and MeetFox have also risen to prominence in recent months. Dyte’s team says the startup offers unique features as it has the ability to have an entire plug-in on the call, so people will not have to move out of the call. However, its key differentiator lies in the fact that it allows users to create their own plug-ins suited for their needs.