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Startups Search for the Right ‘App’titude
These
days, there are mobile applications to service almost every need.
Profile
of five such apps that have managed to capture the Indian market’s
attention recently
Ten-year-old Kavya MD attributes the significant
improvement in her previously poor maths scores to Tabtor, a
locally-developed special education mobile application that works on the
Apple’s iOS platform. PrazAs, the firm behind Tabtor, is just one of the
myriad start-ups looking to cash in on the ongoing mobile boom, which has
seen usage of mobile phones in India skyrocket to about 900 million, driven
by a combination of an increasingly wealthy middle-class, low mobile
billing rates and the advent of affordable smartphones. “Consumers in India
are leapfrogging into mobile,” says Ravi Gururaj, vice-president for cloud
platforms group at Citrix Systems. “Smartphones are very empowering.”
According to Subho Ray, president of Internet and Mobile Association of
India, the country is slated to become one of the biggest players in the
global app market by 2016, overtaking even mature markets like the US.
“This is no surprise,” says Ray, who expects the Indian mobile app market
to be 1,800 crore at the end of this year, pointing out that conditions for
the Indian market to become a leader have improved. The Indian app market
grew at over 22% last year. App developers have adopted a twopronged
strategy, which they feel will allow them to tap into one of the largest
consumer markets in the world as well as appeal to the global marketplace,
allowing them to monetise their product faster. Rohith Bhat, whose startup
Robosoft Technologies created Camera Plus—an app that enhances phone camera
functions—expects the domestic market to generate a quarter of his
company’s business over the next two years. Robosoft’s revenue for fiscal
2011-12 was about 80 crore. The company now gets 10% of its business from
India. “We are tying up with local brands to build the apps for them,” Bhat
said. Vishal Gondal, managing director of d igital at DisneyUTV, says that
as it is now possible to publish apps on Apple, Nokia and Google platforms
“it gets downloaded from any part of the world.” .Profiles of five such
mobile apps, across sectors, which captured the market’s attention
recently.
TABTOR
PrazAs, a startup founded by BITS Pilani and IIT alumni, developed
education-focused Tabtor, whose adaptive learning software is being used by
students of 14 schools in India and the US. The company designed the app at
its research and development centres in Chennai and Bangalore. “We are as
excited as the children,” says Sandhya Khandekar, who teaches maths at GEAR
Innovative International School, a school in Bangalore that uses iPads to
teach students. “Even those who are not good at the subject are now
finishing the problems quickly.” M Srinivasan, founder and chairman of
GEAR, said the app assists each student to learn at a comfortable speed.
“We are enabling everybody to climb their own mountain. We don’t want to force
students to go on the same path and same speed.” The school now plans to
customise the app further by including other subjects like English and
Science. PrazAs is looking to monetise the app by creating customised
versions. It also plans to publish it on the Android platform.
SHOPCIRCLE
ShopCircle, developed by Bangalorebased data analytics startup
Activecubes, helps consumers find prices of products at brick-and-mortar
stores, making shopping easier. The app allows a consumer to see all offers
within a 10 km range. Rajesh Varrier, CEO and co-founder of Activecubes,
says consumers now do not have to spend valuable time scouting for deals—it
helps find information and compare prices of the same product sold in
nearby retail locations. ShopCircle, which went live three weeks ago, has
around 1,000 users in India, according to Varrier. Activecubes aims to make
money with the app by tying up with retailers, advertisers and financial
institutions. “The product details are on your fingertips and you are not
now dependent on the sales people,” Varrier said.
JANA CARE
Jana Care, a startup founded by alumni of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Harvard Business School, helps diabetics. The Bangalorebased
startup’s app helps diabetics to check their blood glucose levels and other
health parameters by plugging in a sensor—also developed by Jana Care—to
their mobile phones. This turns the phone into a cost-effective diagnostic
device. Sidhant Jena, an alumnus of Harvard Business School, co-founded the
firm with Michal Depa, a researcher at MIT. Tarun Khanna, a professor at
Harvard Business School and Devi Prasad Shetty, cardiac surgeon and founder
of Narayana Hrudayalaya, are advisors to the firm. The company is planning
to release their first product in early 2013, following clinical trials.
MUSIGURU
For today’s overworked and constantly-on-the-move professionals, indulging
passions is often a pipe dream, given the demands of their jobs. It’s a
conundrum that MusiGuru wants to resolve. MusiGuru, a mobile application
launched by Bangalore-based startup Levitum Software Systems, is a
video-based learning platform, where Carnatic music is taught to users.
Built on the ubiquitous iOS platform, the app offers users the opportunity
to learn music even while mobile. “It’s a storefront for musicians and
teachers, who want to sell their content, as well as build their brand,”
says co-founder Arvind Krishnaswamy. The start-up, which has been
bootstrapped by its founders so far, has worked out a revenue sharing model
with musicians on board their platform. There are also plans to tie up with
various music colleges to access their content. There has been no
institutional funding so far. We may look for it once the company grows to
a certain size,” says Krishnaswamy. Started in late-2009, the founders were
quick to take advantage of India’s booming mobile telecommunications sector.
The increasing penetration of smartphones in India has also helped.
“Smartphones have been a proven monetisation platform, and we decided to
focus on it in order to get an initial engagement with users,” Krishnaswamy
said.
TWAANG
Offering legal high-quality musical content is what differentiates
Twaang from its peers, according to the developers of the mobile app’s
developers. The online music library app developed by Sound Ventures and
launched in November this year, has tied up with close to 50 record labels
and musicians to bring their music to listeners globally. “Twaang offers
music that is not readily available, but is in high demand. We use an
advertising-focused model, and revenue is shared with artistes,” says
Vishnu Raned, co-founder of Sound Ventures. The app, which is free, allows
users to access 75,000 songs, across 6,000 albums, featuring about 4,000
artistes. Next on the startup’s agenda is to increase the number of songs
to one lakh by the end of the year. “We are planning to come out with a
premium version of the app in 2013, which will be subscription-based, but
ad-free. Users can also listen to tracks even while offline,” Raned said.
He expects Sound Ventures to post its first revenue by January, after which
the founders will look for institutional capital. “We are in talks with a
number of brands. We will need funding, since we are looking to build a
team that will focus on design and user interface,” he said.
Biswarup Gooptu and Peerzada
Abrar ET121221
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