VConsol is full of countryside qualities, says Techgentsia CEO Joy Sebastian

Alappuzha: Joy Sebastian, 43, hailing from Mararikulam South Panchayat, is not new to entrepreneurship. He has two decades of experience in the field of technology. A countryside man who has been active in palliative care and library cultural events.

His new claim to fame is as the owner of the company that made the VConsol software, which was named the best videoconferencing software in the national Innovation Challenge of the Union Electronics and IT Ministry.

"Many of the employees in the company are from my native place. So this is a software filled with countryside qualities," said Joy Sebastian, who is the son of Sebastian, a fisherman, and Mary from Chettikadu in Mararikulam South Panchayat. His wife Lincy George is a teacher at Mary Immaculate High School in Poonkavu. Alan Bastian Joy (a Plus Two student at Leo Thirteenth HSS, Alappuzha), Gia Elsa Joy (a class eight student of St. Joseph's Girls HSS, Alappuzha) are his children.

Excerpts from an interview:

About the success of the project

There is joy and satisfaction. I have been working in this field for over 20 years. I started Techgentsia Software Technologies Pvt Ltd with a friend Tony Thomas 10 years ago, with the aim of researching and developing videoconferencing software. Now the goal is to bring this software to the business world.

Early Challenges

After completing MCA from TKM College, Kollam, I joined a company in Kochi in 2000. The job involved developing software for audio conferencing tools. The Internet was a big problem in those days. Even now, the internet speed in India doesn't allow good quality videoconferencing. New technologies allow access to camera and microphone through the browser. Back then, we had the daunting task of making changes to the browser to enable videoconferencing. But there have been big changes since 2015.

Birth of Techgentsia

Techgentsia Software Technologies Pvt was started by me and my friend Tony Thomas in 2009. It later moved to the Infopark in Cherthala. Four of the company's five directors, inlcuding me, are Malayalees. The other three are Sobin Thomas, who is also the chief operating officer, Visakh Balachandran and Sujithra Swaminathan. Ankur Deep Jaiswal, the other director, is the chief technical officer.

Advantages of VConsol

With the current apps, each person participating in videoconferencing has to stream a video. If a person uses three YouTube apps simultaneously on a computer, it will require three bandwidths, data usage will increase and video quality will decrease. The videos of all the participants in VConsol are combined into a single video. Quality is not lost and data usage will not increase.

The government needed a videoconferencing software for 25 people. VConsol allows active participation of up to 100 people. Up to 300 people can also participate 'passively' (live viewing facility). Besides computer and mobile apps, it can also be used in legacy videoconferencing devices.