Ideophone helps ease the travelers travails

By Shonali Advani

Some innovations aren’t a result of necessity, but of insight. This holds true for the founders of Ideophone, who have built a slew of mobile applications for journey and location awareness and to help commuters travel cheaper, faster and safer. It all started in 2009 when BalaSundaraRaman, 32, commuted 22 kms to work daily, while he was employed at Bengaluru-based mobile search firm, Ziva. Like any commuter, he was a victim of the usual pain points-rude drivers and tampered meters. He bounced an idea around the problem with college mates Anenth Guru, 25, and Sandeep Bhaskar, 28, who were in their second semester at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-B).

Enthused by its prospects, they decided to build their first mobile application, Suruk for fun in September 2009. It was a hand-held digital
meter for auto and taxi rides, and armed with it they applied for Nokia’s B-plan competition.

The test drives
“Suruk shows you the tariff based on the city you are in. We also built a crowd-sourcing feature, which allows commuters to provide feedback on the vehicle’s driver and quality of ride,” says Raman, Co-Founder and CEO, Ideophone. It also acts as a mini map through its ‘route finder’ feature. Initially, the app was up on their website for free downloads and was available on Nokia’s OVI store.

“I found Suruk was designed elegantly keeping the user in mind and so promoted it on the Nokia App store solely on my faith. Since then, it has gone from strength to strength and enjoys a 4/5 star rating on the store. It continues to be downloaded in healthy numbers each month,” says Jeffrey Rufus, Head, Nokia App Store and Windows Marketplace. In the first year itself, Suruk got 40,000 downloads (between both forums) world-over, including Spain and Germany.

By March 2011, they had come up with the second product, One Touch SOS, which allows users to alert any emergency contact through an SMS if faced with such a situation. Unlike Suruk, this was launched as a paid app on the Nokia store costing 1 euro, $1 or Rs. 50 per download. “Once both products were launched, we ran a survey with consumers and found their pain points and saw an opportunity there,” adds Raman.

Simultaneously, they worked on an Android version as the operating system began to gain traction. By June 2011, it was operational on the Windows platform too after a round of feedback and improvements. “An app like One Touch SOS has to be minimal because users shouldn’t be forced to search for options in an emergency situation. While keeping interface minimal and maintaining a good user experience in their subsequent app updates, they improved the app’s performance. They added support for cases even where there was no Global Positioning System (GPS) access. In order to give a native experience to users, they used Microsoft’s Bing maps for Windows phone users,” says Rajinish Menon, Director, Business Development, App Ecosystem, Microsoft.

On the road
Ideophone launched in May 2011 with Bhaskar, Raman and Guru as initial co-founders and in November 2011, they joined the iAccelerator incubation program at the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM Ahmedabad, where they secured an undisclosed sum of seed funding. Tanvi Rangwala, Director, iAccelerator and ICT Initiatives, CIIE, worked with the team to build up their understanding of finance, sales and marketing and connect them with potential investors and industry leaders in the travel space.

She says, “The travel segment forms 75 percent of Indian e-commerce. Considering Ideophone has products in sub-segments like railways and auto rickshaws, we are optimistic about their prospects.”

Kingsley Jegan Joseph, 35, who had been a product manager for various social products in the US, joined as an investor along with CIIE, when he came back to India. Interestingly, he also joined as the fourth Co-Founder in March 2012. “The commuters market is huge but fragmented. We had a global focus but had to start from India. We weren’t clear on how to bring in a service angle either,” recalls Joseph, Product Manager and Growth Hacker, Ideophone.

They realized that long distance travel is equally attractive and so Pyka was born. Targeted at the railways, the product is a simple SMS/voice-based alarm service to alert travelers as they approach their intended station. “People don’t get off at the correct station because they either oversleep or because the trains are running late,” explains Joseph. Before setting off on a journey, a user needs to SMS the train and destination details to Ideophone, which gives them a wake-up call until answered.

Ideophone ran a pilot with Salem Division of Southern Railways, which shared data on 92 trains and stations in its network between April and August 2011. Today, the startup has secured data for stations pan-India, numbering over 2,500, and is in the process of negotiating an agreement with the Indian Railways to launch the service commercially. Currently, Ideophone bears SMS and call costs for this service, which stands at about Rs. 2-3 for each alarm. VNM Rao, Deputy Chief of Signals and Telecom for Southern Railways, who approved the pilot, says, “No one has attempted writing a program based on real-time railway data.” Satisfied with the results, he has recommended Ideophone to higher authorities. “They need to bring in some fall-back arrangements like GPS, in case our servers fail,” he adds.

Planning the route
A chunk of revenues till date has come from One Touch SOS, thanks to a technical partnership with Nigerian firm Contrivances Engineering, which is concerned with protection of lives and properties. It partnered with Ideophone to start an SOS Nigeria project in lieu of rising security threats there, after they came across the app in the Android market. “Its technology is the basis for SOS Nigeria, an Android application that has now placed help at the fingertips of thousands of Nigerians. In the last five months post launch, we have seen more than 2,000 downloads on Samsung Apps limited to Nigeria only,” says Patrick Olusanya Elisha, CEO, Contrivances Engineering. They are in the process of introducing it to the market and have paid Ideophone $2,000 as a commitment fee.

“The application, apart from a safety utility tool, integrates anti-theft and tracking features, which have helped recover stolen phones,” says Elisha. The understanding between both parties is one where the app will be distributed by them for a fee and will be a paid service on annual subscription of Rs. 1000 per year, per user. “We were quite surprised that revenues from such a service were better than India. Here people don’t spend more than Rs. 30,” points out Joseph.

Suruk will continue to remain free for B2C users; however, the startup is thinking of pursuing a white label model, which will be paid and is looking for partners. Alongside, for Pyka, it is in talks with a large Indian industry group that works with the Indian Railways. “We are hoping they can help us with licences to commercialize data and further market Pyka,” says Joseph. Anuj Pulstya, angel investor to Ideophone during the CIIE round, and an independent startup consultant, foresees challenges in scaling One Touch SOS. However, he is of the view that it can become bigger with the help of the government. “It will be a little hard to crack, but if they manage it in one state, then it shouldn’t be a problem,” he states.

For now, Ideophone’s plate is full. In November 2012, it will launch TripThirsty.com, a website that brings travelers together to plan weekend outings. Alongside, it is working on a white label strategy for Kopa too, an app that allows users to car pool to events.

© Entrepreneur India November 2012
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