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May 9, 2007

JAJAH Lands $20 million Series C Funding From Intel

Duncan Riley

19 comments »

jajahlogo.pngVOIP provider JAJAH closes Series C funding of $20 million today, with the lead investment coming from Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel.

Previous TechCrunch coverage here.

As part of the deal Intel will provide JAJAH access to their community of product dealers, OEM customers and developers, as well as access to Intel’s range of VOIP patents.

I spoke to JAJAH CEO Trevor Healy prior to today’s announcement. Although he was unable to shed any light in the particular ways JAJAH would be utilizing Intel’s patents for me, it was evident that it’s a step forward they are pleased with.

Healy did explain some of the other benefits of the new deal, aside from the additional $20 million in the bank. Having access to Intel insiders gives JAJAH the ability to better optimize their product for Intel Chips, both current and those planned for future release.

The deal supports JAJAH’s emphasis on mobile technology. From existing platforms through to ultra mobile devices that merge computers, mobile and wifi technology, JAJAH wants to be a first choice VOIP provider, and the Intel deal should help them achieve that goal.

On Skype the company tries to avoid the apples and apples comparison. As we’ve previously reported, JAJAH’s VOIP service is point to point, bypassing the soft phone of other VOIP providers by connecting calls between the caller and receiver on their respective land lines or cell phones. JAJAH calls itself the 2.0 version of Skype, Voice 2.0.

The call I took with Healy was using JAJAH and call quality between Australia and the United States was significantly better than Skype out. It is a good product, Mike Arrington called it a “killer VOIP product” and I’ll probably end up using it myself if they promise not to call it Voice 2.0 again.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Just a random blog !

    May 29th, 2007 at 3:33 am

  2. Just a random blog !

    May 29th, 2007 at 3:33 am

  3. Jajah Announces Deutsche Telekom As Second Series C Investor | Tekjuice.com

    June 2nd, 2007 at 8:36 pm

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  1. Jay (living in First Life)

    May 9th, 2007 at 10:33 am

    Duncan - tiny typo it’s “Mike Arrington called it a” instead of “Mike Arrington killed it a” unless I’m lost :)

    JAJAH has an interesting business model. Any clue on revenues?

  2. Joe Vandal

    May 9th, 2007 at 10:36 am

    JAJAH Inside?

    Isn’t 20 mil actually pretty small, especially for the third round?

    The big VOIP winner will be the client that provides free PC to landline connections, does JaJah do it?

  3. bdb

    May 9th, 2007 at 10:37 am

    As we are seeing with vonage, having some IP with which to negotiate certainly mitigates some of the risk of pursuing this technology which threatens revenue for the big telecoms. I can see why thy’re pleased with that.

    btw, duncan, “…Arrington killed it a “killer VOIP product” and…”

    you mean “called it a”, right

  4. Paul

    May 9th, 2007 at 11:39 am

    This has the earmarks of a classic Intel investment. Take market segment where high prices act as a roadblock to PC sales, pour bit of money into a company, technology or product line that will force pricing down in that segment, then abandon the effort after prices drop far enough (and usually with a negative ROI on the investment itself).

    I love these services, and use RingCentral’s VOIP-based call bridging regularly, their business models are based on unsustainable arbitrage and the business landscape is littered with the bodies of companies that failed to exploit high long-distance rates.

    Telcos and more integrated service providers will crush Jajah long before Intel’s stake can repay this investment. But, of course, Intel won’t care about such a narrow definition of ROI.

  5. pallet jack

    May 9th, 2007 at 11:56 am

    20 million / patent rights / intel partnership = Intel owns this company in the 80% range.

    -Rbowles

    p.s. Any company taking 3rd round investments / has basically been sold.

  6. Steve S

    May 9th, 2007 at 12:26 pm

    Yep, it looks like Intel is going into VoiP

  7. marc

    May 9th, 2007 at 12:46 pm

    Dont be surprised if you see the revenue model based on advertising new intel products ;) As I can see they are just going to after a faithful high tech traffic and sell intel products to those techno addicts, I guess those who read and comment on this blog are the agnostics in this situation :)

  8. Nathan Kaiser

    May 9th, 2007 at 12:46 pm

    That is great news for Jajah. I use their service religiously to keep in touch with my business partner in France.

    I definitely think they provide the best audio quality for a great price.

    (sorry that this sounds like a paid advertisement, it isn’t - I just use the service 1-4 times / day)

  9. Dave

    May 9th, 2007 at 1:48 pm

    Duncan, Is JaJah similar to IP Gear - same basic business model?

  10. Frank Daley

    May 9th, 2007 at 2:47 pm

    Two months ago I put in some money to test out JAJAH. In my time with the service (via Australia) I had one good quality call. Most were poor quality, and a few were shocking.

    At least for Australia users, I remain sceptical that JAJAH can currently provide a quality service.

  11. lesoto

    May 9th, 2007 at 2:59 pm

    It’s interesting to see what JAJAH is going to do with the money. The owners of the company couldn’t care less about company’s employee. The development team sits in a tiny and dirty office in Raanana, Israel. Employees are severely underpaid and overworked. It’s amazing that engineers who are getting paid peanuts were able to come up with this amazing product.

  12. Moshe Maeir

    May 9th, 2007 at 3:31 pm

    Jajah are really great marketers, but what do they need $20m for? How does this tie into Intel? more on my blog The Flat Planet Phone Co. at http://flatplanetphone.com/wordpress/?p=177

  13. Jay

    May 9th, 2007 at 6:09 pm

    I’ve just used the service and it works well, although some flaws in registration (not allowing my gmail address to register for example), and the billing rates in Korea doesn’t apply as indicated (the system charges $.28 between landlines that belong to two members although it says it should be free). Nevertheless if these flaws are fixed, then the service certainly is promising. The voice quality was pretty good (slight delay compared to pure TDM, but certainly better than Skype out).

    I do have a question about what technology collaboration they would possibly achieve with Intel chipsets though. There is no PC involved in the actual voice telephony (except during the call request). Of course they have backend web servers, call servers for setting up the call, and TDM/VoIP gateway hardware, but these don’t sound like something that will make a huge difference to either Jajah’s service or bottom line (which will be driven mostly by operator interconnect charges), nor will it help Intel that much. Seems a bit like marketing justification of the 20M investment.

  14. David Mackey

    May 9th, 2007 at 6:41 pm

    Pretty sweet deal for JAJAH. Technology patents, insider access, and loads of cash.

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    May 13th, 2007 at 1:33 am

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    May 26th, 2007 at 11:59 am

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