In the past couple of months, Bengaluru-based startup Vavia Technologies has been capturing a lot of attention nationally owing to its interactive mobile apps and services.
Most recently, Spice Digital, a subsidiary of tech firm Spice Mobility picked up 26 percent stake in the startup as well to make Vavia's offering available globally. In an interview with ET, Vavia's CEO
and Co-founder, Alan D'Souza talks about significant contribution of Koramangala in the success of Vavia.
Please tell us something about Vavia Technologies.
Vavia was founded by me and Abhinay Reddy when we were studying at PESIT Bengaluru. I met Abhinay at college and we shared the passion towards clean and beautiful web and mobile products. We launched Vavia in 2008 and started by providing web and mobile solutions to businesses in Bengaluru. We gradually expanded our reach and we reached the 100 clients mark sooner than expected. This was the seed capital towards building our products.
How has been Vavia's journey so far?
This journey has been the most exciting part of my life till now. Having started right from college, we had the advantage of accessing the right talent pool from our alma-mater. The idea was to provide web and mobile services to build a revenue stream that would fund the development of our products. From 2008 - 2012 we went on building up our expertise and team to come up with a product that would be accepted by masses.
In November 2012 we launched txtBrowser - An SMS based search engine. The idea was simple - to provide information available on the internet over SMS. Due to its simplicity and viral nature, the product quickly built up traction and we started receiving over 10 lakh queries everyday within six months of launch. We have answered over 50 crore queries since launch and the service is now available in six asian countries. In the month of September 2014, we raised investment from Spice Digital to take this service to many more countries.
What are your offerings at present?
After receiving an overwhelming response for txtBrowser, we started slowly building products for the growing smartphone industry. We launched Confess as India's first anonymous social network on Android. We were amazed by the virality and the content that was being generated on the app. Very recently, we launched FreePaisa - an android app that allows users to get free talktime in exchange for trying out other android apps listed on the app.
Which are Vavia's recently launched apps which are gaining a traction off late?
We have three products in focus right now - txtBrowser, Confess and FreePaisa. While txtBrowser is a VAS product, Confess and FreePaisa are android-based apps. txtBrowser allows users with any phone to search for information over SMS. He could send "restaurants in Koramangala", "who was hitler", "movie timings in Forum-Koramangala" or just about anything in natural language. It can be accessed by sending your query to 55444 from your Airtel Mobile, 55577 on Idea and 56300 on other operators.
Confess is an anonymous social network that allows you to express your thoughts to your friends and people around without having to reveal your identity. It creates an anonymous friend graph for you that will see your thoughts on their confessions' feed.
What is Vavia's growth trajectory?
Vavia was on a steady growth path from 2008 to 2012. This was also due to the fact that we kept making investments in research and product development. The launch of txtBrowser in Nov 2012 happened to be a turning point for the company. txtBrowser earns revenue by charging users for the queries that are sent our way. Queries are charged at Rs 1 - 1.5. As of October 2014, we have crossed answering 50 crore queries. We are currently at a double digit revenue growth month-on-month.
What's your assessment of VAS market in India?
VAS market is witnessing a radical change. Traditional VAS services are now becoming more competent to serve the growing user base. With smartphones penetrating the Indian market at a lightning speed, VAS providers will have to adopt and enhance their offerings.
Since you are Bengaluru-based venture, what is the relevance of Koramangala for Vavia?
Most of our team and clients are based out of Bengaluru. Being the business hub that it is, most of my clients are based here. Also, due to its strategic location most talent also chooses to live in Koramangala. We still have business presence in Koramangala.
How has Koramangala helped Vavia to gain more visibility in the market?
Vavia had benefited from the location advantage of Koramangala when we were providing web/mobile services. Most clients want to work with businesses that are close to their location and having presence in Koramangala helped the business in a great way.
What do you think can be the top three quick business ideas for aspiring entrepreneurs, which can be started with low capital and can be cashed in on Koramangala?
Since Koramangala is a hub for talent and has a lot of new people constantly hitting the place. Some of the business concepts that come to mind are - House Rental search related products, Job search based on location/skillsets and local transport aggregators.
Ok, finally tell us your key to success?
I was really fortunate to have the right mentors when I was starting out. I believe any entrepreneur must have four most important qualities to succeed, i.e., self belief, tolerance of ambiguity, passion and tenacity.
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