Jataayu was founded in 1999 and has been an early mover in the mobile handheld space. Jataayu is a spin-off from Mahesh's first company Integra Micro System. The company was born when Integra's product division came up with a mobile prototype in the late 1990s says Mahesh.
In 2000 the company got its first round of funding of $2 million from Tata Consultancy Services and GE Capital and the vision was to build an international product says Mahesh.
The telecom meltdown of 2001-2002 made it difficult for Jataayu to sell during this period. But, today the company's handheld solutions and infrastructure solutions are licensed to almost all the major handset manufacturers and mobile operators. Mahesh says that about 20 million handsets in the world carry Jataayu software and about 50 operators have Jataayu's software.
According to Mahesh about 70% of WAP related traffic passes through Jataayu's WAP servers. Companies like Vodofone, Samsung, Philips license Jataayu's WAP browser. The one major account missing from Jataayu's client list is Nokia and Mahesh thinks that by the year end they have a good chance of converting Nokia as their client.
We also discussed a central quest of mine: what will be the primary access device to the Internet in India? Mahesh unhestitainingly replied the mobile phone will be the basic access device to the Internet in India.
Mahesh is a chemical engineer from IIT-Kanpur. He got his masters in engineering and computer science from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. He founded his first company Integra Micro Systems in 1982.
Mahesh lives with his family in Bangalore.
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