Ever since the coronavirus pandemic struck, Zoom has been taking over the world of video conferencing. Many other companies have realized that and have started offering or improving their own video calling services — see Google Meet, Duo, Microsoft Teams, and others. Indian telecommunications company Reliance Jio also wants a slice of the cake and has launched its own approach to video conferencing, JioMeet.
I could explain the feature set and UI of JioMeet, but it boils down to this: If you know Zoom on Android, you’ll almost certainly feel right at home on JioMeet. The interface, text strings, and UX conventions are heavily inspired from the video calling king — see the Twitter thread below. The monetization strategy is different, though. While Zoom locks away some features behind a subscription, JioMeet is completely free for now. You can have an unlimited amount of password-protected conferences with up to 100 people in 720p HD quality, calls can be up to 24 hours long, there’s multi-device login support and seamless switching, and you can enable waiting rooms so that you can hand-select who’s able to join your call.
Sure, there are only so many ways to create a video conferencing service, but the similarities between JioMeet and Zoom are just too striking. Compare that to other video chat apps like Google Meet, Skype, or Microsoft Teams, and you’ll see vastly different approaches despite the apps offering the same functionality.
JioMeet is available on Android and iOS and the usual desktop operating systems. It has already amassed more than 100,000 installs on the Play Store, so apparently, the application is gaining quite some traction, probably mostly in India.