Jaman Restructuring After Layoffs and Attrition

Independent movie web distributor Jaman appears to be petering out. The company has “made a strategic decision to emphasize a business-to-business oriented professional video platform and services for the future,” according to a statement from founder and CEO Gaurav Dhillon provided to NewTeeVee. Jaman said it plans to continue offering its movie and community service amid the restructuring.

It seems unlikely the company will be able to keep up its offerings considering it’s laid off most of its engineers, its international development team, its acquisitions team, its biz dev team, and its marketing team, according to people familiar with the situation. Other employees have left of their own accord between rounds of layoffs. (Thanks to “Bob” for sparking us to call the company with your tip.)

Jaman managed to keep making news even as it laid off and lost staff, bringing it down to five employees today from what used to be more than 30, according to sources. Since the first round of layoffs in October, Jaman signed content from indie distributor E1 and 60Frames, got distribution on TiVo, and opened an office in the UK (which has apparently since closed). Earlier in 2008, the company had seemed to swivel from its original indie focus by signing Paramount content.

Jaman was one of the very first companies we covered on NewTeeVee. It had raised $4 million from Dhillon Capital (its founder’s fund) and individuals. We don’t really know what “a business-to-business oriented professional video platform and services” would consist of, but we hope it’s at least something focused on movies. This world has enough white-label video services.