On April 11, the government notified the Supreme Court it will submit the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022 during Parliament’s Monsoon Session. The measure recognized privacy and established legal data processing.
This was fantastic for San Francisco-based Skiff. Skiff, a privacy-focused firm, provides encrypted email and collaboration.
End-to-end encryption protects user data from even the service provider.
The business hopes data protection and privacy awareness to draw Indians to its company. Skiff anticipates India to be one of its top revenue providers in the future years, therefore it is banking big on this law.
The business secretly debuted its Indian-focused Android and Windows collaboration and productivity package last week.
There’s a huge data protection and privacy awakening. In the last two years, India has had a tremendous moment on that. “That led us to build our suite of products,” explains Skiff Co-founder and CEO Andrew Milich.
Skiff’s initial product, Pages, was created in 2021 by Stanford grads Milich and Jason Ginsberg (Chief Technology Officer).
Mail, Calendar, and Drive—end-to-end encrypted, private, and debuted in various months last year—followed.
“We have our own SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) servers. No third-party service is used. Skiff Head of Infrastructure and Founding Engineer Arpeet Kale believes it helps secure user data.
Skiff’s goods don’t require any personal information. Simply establish an account with their username and password. The startup denies access to user emails, papers, calendars, and files.
Alphabet provides workspace and productivity solutions. Gmail has 1.5 billion users in 2018, the most of any email service provider, but it has been criticized for eavesdropping on users and selling their data to advertising.
ProtonMail, an end-to-end encrypted email company, and Chennai-based Zoho Mail are also rivals.
Skiff provides workplace collaboration and end-to-end encryption without setup, unlike ProtonMail and Zoho. It integrates some encryption based on user settings.
Software firms, media companies, journalists, writers, authors, researchers, crypto companies, etc. value that degree of data management. Milich emphasizes serenity of mind.
The firm makes importing email from Google, Outlook, and ProtonMail easy. One may download all Google Drive folders—notes, documents, and files—and transfer them to Skiff Drive in two steps.
Skiff products also include Web3. Decentralized storage. Kale claims users may save all data on decentralized storage, not even on our servers.
“Even if Skiff disappears, you could still go, use the same key, decrypt the data, and download it locally,” he says.
Skiff’s wallet integrations with MetaMask and Brave Wallet allow users to sign into its products “to have complete privacy, ownership, and the ability to claim an identity that’s uniquely theirs,” according to a blog post.
To establish a privacy-respecting crypto-payment mechanism, it worked with Coinbase Commerce. Skiff customers may buy using a wallet or their Coinbase account, which protects them and reduces their digital trace.
Since iOS dominates the US, Skiff built for iOS consumers from the start.
Skiff discovered between December 2022 and January 2023 that Indian and European users accounted for 10% of its traffic.
Skiff has 650,000 users: 53% Windows, 18% Android, and 11% iOS.
“Since everyone is entitled to privacy, we have to meet people where they are, and Windows/Android are obviously more relevant in the Indian context,” says Milich.
Skiff’s 20-person team, 15 of whom are full-time, began tweaking Android and Windows programs for Indian users.
Infrastructure upgrades and a redesigned user interface minimize app-load time. It also improved offline support, allowing users to view emails and make calendar invites. These would also be worldwide.
Rebuilding an app takes four to five months and is a major investment. The company’s survival depends on it. So, we took a fairly huge gamble that we need to revamp the app to thrive in India and, ideally, in other of our lower traffic countries,” says Milich.
Skiff will spend $500,000 over six months on social media and marketing in India for its India launch.
Skiff plans to support major Indian languages. Depending on customer interest, the firm plans to register in India and recruit a team in two years.
It is betting big on key Indian cities to embrace its workplace product suite, expecting data protection and privacy awareness would catch up.
It hopes to add at least five million users—one to two million from India—over the next two to three years. The business intends to increase Indian consumers by next year from 10%.
Sequoia Capital, Neo, Ethereum Foundation, and angels including John Lilly (former Mozilla CEO) and Balaji Srinivasan (former Coinbase CTO) invested $23 million in two rounds in the California firm.
Skiff’s cheap operating costs keep most of the money unspent, according to Milich. It will be used to improve product capabilities, including introducing sophisticated Google Workspace features, enterprise features (direct rivalry to Google Workspace), and user privacy.
Skiff’s product-led strategy prioritizes user experience and social media initiatives to learn more about its customers. It also prepares “good customer service to respond to people to help them have a good experience”.
The team also uses referrals, providing $10 for installing its Android/iOS applications or $15 for importing Google Drive data.
Skiff expects enterprises to follow individual users in its initial go-to-market approach. After a million users, it will target businesses.
Skiff’s price tiers, introduced in October-November, resemble Google and Outlook’s office package, according to Milich.
The firm expects to reach “a few million sign-ups” and five million in 2-3 years by increasing at least 3-4X in the next 12-18 months. India leads the startup’s path.
