Zuver, Your Driver on demand, a Mumbai-based start-up launched in early April 2016 has launched operations in Pune and Bangalore. Co-Founded by Sidhanth Mally and Sovin Hegde, Zuver has gained significant traction since its introduction in the driver on demand segment and will soon operationalize in other metros as well.
After having established itself substantially in Mumbai, Zuver now intends to position itself as the dominant player in other parts of India, thereby creating a stronghold and a launchpad for it to drive into various other markets in India. Zuver had already acquired a credible operational presence spanning both Pune and Bangalore through their investor footprint namely the Hermes Group and Shruth and Smith Holdings respectively.
Zuver’s USP is that it promises a reliable, skilled, well-trained ‘driver on demand’ service at your doorstep at just a tap of a button. With 100 drivers on their network in Mumbai at present, Zuver has already plat-formed 25 drivers in Pune and 70 drivers in Bangalore. Pune and Bangalore users will be able navigate stress free through long and arduous stretches of traffic jams while subscribing to affordable transportation services provided by Zuver like Drivers on Demand, Monthly Driver Subscriptions including just pickup and drop, Outstation Drives and Valet Parking. On popular demand, Mumbai – Pune trips will also be covered by Zuver allowing both one way and return options.
Speaking on this, Sidhanth Mally, Co-founder of Zuver said
Pune being the sixthLargest Private Vehicle Market in India with no focused Driver on Demand Player catering to it, Zuver allows you to book, track and pay for a premium driver service all through the App. Zuver aims to carry out 50 trips a day within the next 3 months out of Pune and will on-board 50-100 drivers in that time-span. Our success in Mumbai is evident with the affirmative response we have received from our customers, and we will take this opportunity to repeat the same in Pune and Bangalore
With 50 Lakh potential customers struggling to drive in increasing traffic and explosively expanding city limits, Bangalore is the 2nd highest city in terms of car ownership city in India. With a young population that has a large disposable income we are excited to provide trips all round the clock right from work commuting hours at dawn to party time well beyond dusk! We have around 70 reliable, skilled, well-trained drivers in Bangalore and are looking to on-board 200 drivers in a short period
Zuver for Android and iOS is available here & here respectively.
About Zuver – Driver on Demand
Zuver is a start-up with a unique selling proposition –a service that promises reliable, skilled, well-trained ‘driver on demand’ at your doorstep. They aim to make their drivers the gold standard for industry drivers and create a new benchmark. This mobile-first company that offers the best in class service is on its course to expand its presence in other metros. Zuver, Your driver on demand is available on Android and iOS or at 022-43686868. For more information, please refer Zuver
WorkApps – India’s first Enterprise Workflow Collaboration [EWC] company announced that it has received seed fund of $1 million from legendary enterprise SAAS investor – Sashi Reddi, Partner – SRI Capital. WorkApps product is being rolled out simultaneously in US, Europe and APAC later this year. The core management team at WorkApps includes Rudrajeet Desai, MVS Murthy and Shankar Borate
Rudrajeet is a first-generation entrepreneur in the consumer Internet and mobile industry space. MVS Murthy is a BFSI professional with 19 years of experience in Product development, Portfolio Management, Channel Management, Strategy & Business Innovation in large corporates like ICICI Bank, Edelweiss & Tata AIG, among others. Shankar Borate is a computer scientist from IIT with 20 years experience in building a wide range of products for giants like Adobe, Symantec, Intuit, Siemens & GE.
We foresee the next big wave for Indian start-ups in the Enterprise Collaboration market globally. With over two years of product testing, I am extremely excited about the potential of WorkApps to be a pioneer in the Enterprise Workflow Collaboration [EWC] category. With Rudrajeet, MVS Murthy and Shankar Borate leading the global product roll-out, I’m confident that WorkApps will be able to create immense value to large enterprise customers in the Enterprise Collaboration space. WorkApps will create a digital inside enterprise and enable diverse teams to digitally come together to co-create using real-time collaboration. Though there are many players in this space, none of them cater to the Large Enterprise market, which is where WorkApps has built a very robust and scalable product.
We are excited to have SRI Capital as one of our early investors and to have Sashi join our board. Our next phase is about rolling out the product globally and creating a deeper impact for certain industries. Enterprise Workflow Collaboration (EWC) on SAAS will be a dominant force in the enterprise space and our product will enable large enterprises to augment communication efforts, improve efficiency and change the way people collaborate and work together.
Enterprises have limited bandwidth and assorted knowledge to work with pure play service companies. This makes it difficult to create a one-view of the entire organization’s requirements. One of the most unique differentiators of WorkApps Inc. is our hybrid Product and Consulting model where an Enterprise doesn’t need to pay hourly development fee and yet get a lot of flexibility for Customization and Integration into their own systems. We co-create with our Customers and pass on an ownership that is unique to each of them.
About SRI Capital
SRI Capital is a seed stage investor focused on the “as a service” economy. Interest areas include software, data, analytics, services—anything where the customer pays a subscription amount on a recurring basis for that offering. They have over 20 investments in Enterprise SaaS, SME and Consumer SaaS sectors in India and US. For more information, please visit SRI Capital
Being a Mumbaikar, I really love local food especially Vada Pav but when I moved to Bengaluru; I missed it a lot 🙂 In Bengaluru, I found love in Idli Dosa, 99 Dosas etc. The best thing about India is that each city has it’s own uniqueness especially Local food. If you are a visitor to any city, you would have definitely wished to have “Famous Dishes” from local food joint 🙂 If you have any friend in that city, (s)he can guide you but if you are on your own, you have no option left – But to explore !!!
This is the gap ‘”Exploring local Food across India” that Bengaluru based startup – TalkingStreet is trying to address. It is part of the NASSCOM 10,000 Startups & is based out of the NASSCOM warehouse. Today, we have a chat with Maheima Kapur [Founder & CEO of TalkingStreet] about her entrepreneurial journey, Marketing, NASSCOM 10K startups etc. So, let’s get going with the Q&A…
[PS : I in the article refers to Maheima Kapur]
Can you give a small background about yourself, your start-up and it’s founders ?
Local / Street Food is an important aspect of the culture of a city. It is something that interests many people. Travelers, local residents, foodies are all excited at the idea of sampling local food across the city, provided they are pointed to it by someone they trust. However, discovering popular street-side eateries and vendors is impossible without a local guide.
Talking Street is the local foodie friend that all traveling foodies wish they had in a city. The platform curates & showcases the best of popular, local eateries, so that foodies can hyper-locally discover delicious local food around where they are. This includes very popular eateries in cities as well as street food hangouts recommended by foodie contributors.
It offers self-guided food tours and organizes food events to bring popular food, stall owners and foodies together. An example is below
Talking Street is a sole founder startup. I have around 9 years of work experience across different FMCG organizations. I am a Physics graduate from Sri Satya Sai University and an MBA from IIM Bangalore. My core area of expertise and interest is consumer insights and marketing mix development.
The core team @ Talking Street consists of Naganand Doraswamy and Siddharth Mathur, apart from me. Naganand Doraswamy is a mentor to the startup. He has around 25 years of experience and is president of TiE Bangalore. He is Co-founder and EVP of SPAN.
Siddharth is the Technical Advisor to Talking Street. He is the founder of Fastah, an app with a mission to make mobile internet more fun and enjoyable.
Talking Street is a lean startup. We work largely with consultants and interns. Here are some more details about the team that has made this startup a reality https://talkingstreet.in/meet-the-team/
How different is Talking Street different from other food-tech companies like Zomato etc. ?
At Talking Street our attempt is to help travelers experience the food culture of different cities by helping them eat at the most popular local eateries. So we take the help of foodies to map and share the most famous local eateries across cities. (It’s not just street food but popular eateries, which are often a mix of small eateries, iconic outlets as well as street food stalls).
Zomato is a listing platform, whereas as Talking Street is curated. We ensure that all the eateries on Talking Street are popular, hygienic and highly recommended by local foodies. Also, we don’t cover fine dine restaurants. To give you an example, there is a small eatery in Gandhinagar (in Bengaluru) who makes very good bhajji’s / pakoras (and is doing so for the last 20 years); you would probably not find it on Zomato but on Talking Street, eateries such as these are what we strive to list. Hence, Zomato offers a different value proposition as compared to Talking Street.
In out attempt to help users experience the food culture of a city, we like to cover eateries by including the stories of the people behind them. That adds hugely to the way people experience the food and understand the underlying cultural nuances.
Also, when we say that we are a curated platform, we do not list each & every local eatery on the platform. Only those outlets which meet our criteria are listed. The focus, is thus, on ensuring that our users have a superlative food experience whichever outlet they pick.
Is Talking Street bootstrapped, VC funded or Angel Funded ?
We are completely bootstrapped. We plan to go slow and build TalkingStreet organically 🙂 When time is right, we would definitely look out for funding but the current priority is on building the best experience for TalkingStreet users.
Talking Street is more about Local Food Exploration, so is it an aggregator of vendors who have fixed shop ?
We cover local eateries that make awesome food. We are aware that many of them do not have fixed locations but we track them. In case the vendor moves to a different location, we update his where-about on TalkingStreet.
You can refer this link to get more insights on how we choose the right vendors. Would like to share this video that gives more insights into the entire process.
Currently Talking Street is operational in how many cities in India ?
We have covered major part of Bengaluru. Though we are covering Mumbai, Kolkata, Jaipur etc., we are constantly adding joints to our respective city database. We are also open for suggestions of places from Foodies since they have the right taste buds and know-how about the food joint.
When someone suggests a place, we do not directly list them but our team checks on all the parameters like food, food quality etc. before listing them. We are also working on TalkingStreet mobile app that would be very useful in such scenarios.
How many vendors/joints have signed up with Talking Street & is there any sign-up fee for the vendor ?
We have more than 500+ joints present on TalkingStreet. There is no sign-up fee for the vendors. If the vendor makes awesome food that is loved by foodies, they definitely deserve a place on our platform.
Can you throw light on the revenue model of Talking Street [Free/Freemium etc] ?
Right now, we can skip this question 🙂
Any plan/tentative deadline to release the mobile app of Talking Street ?
We are working on the app and it should be there on the Store soon. Cannot comment on the deadline at this very moment 🙂
What are the major changes that you experienced when you became an entrepreneur ?
The need to manage and stretch time. There’s just never enough time in a day to get everything that needs to be done, completed.
The buck stops here. Everything stops at the founder. If something has to be done, I’ve got to do it. It’s especially stark with solo founders. In a bigger organization the responsibilities are divided.
There goes my work-life balance. I believed in a sharp work-life balance and avoided carrying work on my mind when I was away from my laptop. That changed significantly with entrepreneurship. I’ve often caught myself being totally wired into work over weekends, holidays, days-off. It’s not something I like and I’m working to change that.
Holidays have become work-actions – there’s always something to cover or research for Talking Street when I travel and while it’s fun for the most part of it, there are times when it’s like work following you even on a vacation 🙂
How much has NASSCOM 10K helped in accelerating your startup journey ?
NASSCOM 10,000 startups has been an amazing experience. Right from the very helpful startup kit that they give all the shortlisted companies, to the co-working space with all the startups who are ready to help at short notice. The NASSCOM team is super helpful at all times – they make huge efforts to connect the startups to relevant mentors, investors and experts. They also help the startups with media outreach and PR.
What are your key advice(s) to people who want to start-up ?
Be clear about why you want to startup. A startup is hard work and while it might look glamorous from the outside, it’s actually far less shiny once you’re in. It calls for a high degree of commitment and perseverance. So be sure of why you want to do it. You see your idea solving a huge pain for users, you want to make an impact with your product, create jobs, want to build a large organization, want to be independent – know your reasons and recall them ever so often on your journey. Your reasons will guide you on whether to apply for funding or whether you should bootstrap, on what you should build and how you should build it.
Research your idea/concept before deciding taking the plunge. Make sure that there is a need and that someone will pay for what you are planning to build, at some point. Too often we startup without doing the necessary ground work to ascertain the need/use case for what we are creating. Doing the work required on understanding the user and his problem (for which you intend to solve) will help you understand whether that problem exists, whether it is important enough to solve and if yes, what is the route to solving it.
Enjoy the journey. Yes there’s a destination but it is going to be a tough, uphill climb getting there so there’s no point unless you are having fun along the way.
Importance & Role of mentor in any startup
Very important since a mentor is able to approach the business from a distance and thus sees things differently from the founder(s) who are right in the middle of it all. So (s)he brings an objective perspective to the business and growth. A mentor also brings deep knowledge of the ecosystem and thus is able to kick-start thought processes which aid decision making. My mentor gives me the space to chart a route that works for me while being very firm on the business deliverables. Conversations with him help me think clearly. He also holds me to the metrics that we lay down and it helps to have someone ask the tough questions, as he puts it.
Can you give some pointers on Scaling Up and Customer Acquisition ?
Businesses need to be very careful about scaling up. Technical products which scale easily without much physical infrastructure or manpower are different from businesses which require people and infrastructure to scale. Ensuring a delightful user experience has to be the key concern while taking scaling decisions.That means hiring the right people and making the required investments in process and infrastructure, both of which take time. Hence a 6 month, multi-city operation expansion can only lead to trouble, in my opinion.
There have been many examples of organizations needing to scale back or having to close down altogether in the last 6 months, because they scaled too fast in this mad rush to get more users. Getting more users cannot come at the cost of delivering a poor experience.
Some hiring tips for entrepreneurs [especially the core team] ?
Find people who have a high degree of commitment. It helps to have a team which doesn’t need supervision because they are as motivated as you are. For the core team, get people who share your values and vision, in addition to commitment. Teams break up and startups slow down or close because the core team does not see eye to eye. A deep trust and compatibility will always make journey interesting even in the tough patches.
Seed/Bootstrapped/VC funding ? Your thoughts on the same.
Bootstrap as far as you can go. Build an MVP and get to a stage of having a few paying customers. Then look for funding to scale faster. Funding at earlier stages comes at terms which need not be favourable and will bring unnecessary stress.
Any parting words from you for budding entrepreneurs ?
Do live research with users at every step so that you spend time on the right aspects of the business/product.
Be firm in your belief and plough on, the road will emerge. Keep your burn low so that your runway is long and you can sustain yourself even if the product takes time to blossom.
Entrepreneurship is like an accelerated road to self-discovery. It brings out traits that we often didn’t think we possess – both positive and negative. In my case it has helped me become more aware of my insecurities and failings
We hope that you enjoyed the Q&A since it had lot of learning for aspiring entrepreneurs. If you have any questions for Maehima or the TalkingStreet team, please leave them in the comments section. Do give TalkingStreet a spin and leave your feedback here or email it at hello@talkingstreet.in
Rainmaker Ventures, co-founded by Industrialist Sudhir Menon & Digital Marketer Atul Hegde, announced that it has invested $5 million in YAAP – a super speciality digital content company. Rainmaker Ventures with presence in India, USA, Brazil and Singapore is an early stage start-up fund of $50 million that was launched in December last year. Rainmaker Ventures identifies competent start-ups and not only invests seed-capital, but also, wholly mentors these establishments through the co-founders collective expertise of growing successful businesses in the past.
YAAP, focusses on the three digital content service lines of Design, Discovery and Distribution. In Content design the firm looks at branded content, digital show formats, syndication, brand and visual identity, in Content discovery it looks at influencer identification, outreach and empanelment and in Content distribution it looks at programmatic content placement, alliances and channel partnerships. The focus being creating and distributing engaging content for businesses to attract, retain and deliver customer satisfaction.
YAAP has a non CEO, Partner model where digital media professionals Nikhil Bapat & Manan Kapur have joined in as Partners in Mumbai & Gurgaon respectively. The company will use majority of the funds invested by Rainmaker Ventures for acquisitions in the Branding & Visual Identity space, Automated content distribution platforms & Content creation platforms. The funds would also be utilized for YAAP’s expansion plans in the Singapore & USA market where they plan to open offices by early next year.
YAAP is a perfect example of the nature of investments Rainmaker Ventures wants to lead. We will contribute both Capital & Mentorship to YAAP. We see YAAP become a leading player in the digital content ecosystem within the next 2 years. We have a fantastic model & the senior team in place and now will go out aggressively looking for the right acquisitions.
At YAAP we are trying to build a unique model both from our offerings & the company structure itself. We are happy to find a partner like Rainmaker Ventures that is so bullish of the Digital Content sector and are going beyond infusion of capital into the company, with active mentoring of the management team.
Atul Hegde, Co-Founder Rainmaker Ventures will be the Chief Mentor and join the YAAP board post this investment. This is the second investment made by Rainmaker Ventures, an early seed-fund that was launched in December last year. The fund is already in the process of investing in compelling businesses that are impactful in nature. Expansion will also be enabled with more senior professionals from varied sectors joining the company as full time mentors.
Going far beyond its expected growth, Zenify.in, an online home rental aggregator & management startup, has achieved over 1000 property listings under its category Zenify Homes. The glorious milestone has been achieved in just 4 months since the launch of this service, enabling the company to play a key role in standardizing the rental residential property market in Bengaluru.
Launched in February this year, Zenify Homes was introduced as a viable service to enable better management of residential buildings as well as ensuring maximum retention of tenants. It specifically caters its services to building owners/managers who may be encountering some difficulties in managing the premises or dealing with the residents.
We are extremely delighted to have achieved this milestone in such short span of time. With our management services gaining prominence in individual rental properties, we knew it was time to introduce a new category which can exclusively assist residential building owners to supervise their property effectively. We are happy to know that more and more building supervisors are now utilizing our services to improve the overall management of their property, and we hope to maintain this growth in the near future as well.
Elaborating further on this achievement, Shantakumar S. Harlapur, Manager – Sales, Zenify.in said
This milestone is very crucial for Zenify.in as it has helped us gain strong foothold in real estate market. With ‘Zenify Homes’, the company has been able to tap into a segment within this industry which was previously ignored. Poor management, maintenance, and/or lack of secondary services are just some of the reasons why most residential building lose potential tenants. However, with our comprehensive management services, most building owners have now been able to turn their properties into one of the most sought after among renters.
Under this category, Zenify.in takes full responsibility of managing a property. Some of its services include – Waste management, 24/7 security, Housekeeping, Bill payments, and other maintenance services as and when required.
About Zenify
Zenify is India’s only complete Home Aggregator and Rental Management Startup. Headquartered in Bengaluru, the technology driven startup, has simplified home rentals with technology. Through Zenify’s unique ZRP [Zenify Rental Price], Zenify brings in standardisation for home rentals. ZRP is a fixed rental price for each property that is available for rent, the price is fixed based on its localities and demands. For more information, please visit Zenify
What would be widely selected option for the Poll Question – Which is the job category where the job security is Almost guaranteed ?. Without even looking for the Poll Options, you would have mentally decided that ‘Government Job’ is the most secure job option in India 🙂 Before the advent of the Private Organizations in India, there was natural inclination towards Govt Jobs since it was considered a matter of pride & prestige to secure a job in Government sector.
However, with the flurry of Private Companies, the enthusiasm among the youth to join government sector jobs drastically reduced. One of the main reasons was the lack of information about the jobs available in the sector [across various industries like Banking, Finance etc.] and rampant corruption in those jobs. But situation seems to have changed after the BJP Government came into power 2 years back, the main reason being many entrepreneurs [like Nandan Nilekani of Infosys fame, Amit Ranjan of Slideshare fame etc.] have played major role in the transformation of the government to ‘Digital Government’. Though Nandan Nilekani was from Congress, his legacy i.e. Aadhar or UIDAI is still playing a crucial role in life of every Indian. PPP [Public Private Partnership] is definitely making things more transparent and execution of government projects much faster !!!
There is awesome news for people seeking jobs in the government sector, over two Lakh posts are estimated to be created by the Central government in it’s various departments [Source* – ET] If you are an engineer planning to pursue UPSC, than this is the right time to switch to your dream career 🙂 You may ask, why are we discussing about Sarkari Jobs – One of my colleagues wanted to move to Government Job since he had interest in it but due to family pressure he landed in Engineering 🙁 While looking out for an appropriate job, we found that there is no dedicated source that lists latest govt jobs until we came across Sarkarijobmilegi. Sarkarijobmilegi.in provides latest Govt Jobs in various government sectors namely Bank Jobs, Teaching Jobs, Railways Jobs, Police Jobs, Defence Jobs, UPSC Jobs, SSC Jobs, Public Sector, PSC etc.
Since the site as well as the Android App was quite helpful to my ex-colleague, we decided to do a thorough review of Sarkarijobmilegi – One stop site for all your Sarkari Job requirements!!!
Sarkarijobmilegi : Niche vertical job website
Unlike other job sites that have jobs catering to numerous categories, Sarkarijobmilegi is a fresh breather since it’s target segment is pre-defined i.e. Only Govt job aspirants. This makes the user-interface also minimalist & less cluttered. Blog kind of interface makes navigation, search and performing other activities on the website very easy!
Sarkarijobmilegi : Government jobs listed across sectors
Whether you are a 10th pass-out or 12th pass-out and aspire to pursue government job that match your skills, this site has the answer. It tries to cover each and every category of government jobs. Be it job in any particular sector or job in any particular State etc, you would ideally find it on Sarkarijobmilegi.
Some important government sectors include Bank, Railway, SSC, UPSC, BHEL, Insurance, Medical, Media and they have it all covered. You can can also filter Latest Govt Jobs by State/Qualification/Job category etc which makes searching for the RIGHT sarkari job all the lot easier 🙂 For example: You can find all the Revenue Department jobs here
Sarkarijobmilegi : Differentiation via Hindi Videos
With the advent of 4G and the growing penetration of internet, it becomes very critical to capitalize on all the sources that can provide useful information to the user. In case of Sarkarijobmilegi, they use the medium of videos to dish out latest information on Government jobs via their YouTube channel
If you are a government job aspirant, you can subscribe to their channel [videos are in Hindi which also increases the overall reach] and get updates about the Latest Govt Jobs
Sarkarijobmilegi : Job Alerts on Mobile
As mentioned in the previous point, tapping every user-channel for better user conversion is very essential. Sarkarijobmilegi also have an Android App where you can view any of the Govt jobs at the click of a button. Their YouTube channel is also embedded in the App so that you can get latest informative videos on Government jobs.
In case you do not want to miss out on any government job posted on Sarkarinaukrimilegi, you can subscribe to get Push Notifications for latest job posted every day. The great part about the Sarkari Naukri App is that it works even without the Internet which means it might occupy some more space in your device [for offline storage of data]. We tried the app on low-end & high-end Android phone(s) and did not observe any noticeable difference in the performance of the Sarkari Naukri App..
You can also join their Facebook group to connect and get necessary support from other job aspirants. If you aspire to get into government job and want to stay updated with the jobs, job related news etc. than do give Sarkarinaukrimilegi a spin !!!
If you have used Sarkarinaukrimilegi for landing to your dream #Sarkarinaukri than do leave your feedback in the comments section…
Spinny, the online used car marketplace that recently acquired its rival HopCar, has introduced data driven algorithmic engines – ‘Spinny Star Price‘ and ‘Spinny Star Rating‘, which the company stresses will further help simplify the entire process of Buying and Selling Pre-Owned Cars online.
For an individual, it’s very difficult to correctly predict the right price of any car. The information asymmetry prevalent in the used car market often leads to cases of over-payment & underpayment in a transaction, leaving the buyers & the sellers unsatisfied. The Spinny Star Price helps tackle this issue. While there are other algorithms available in the market, the Spinny Star Price engine, provides reasons behind how the price provided has depreciated to its current value from the car’s original on-road price.
Spinny price engine leverages artificial neural network model to accurately predict the price of a used car. According to Ramanshu Mahaur, CTO & Co-Founder
The engine takes in account more than 500K data points from actual car transactions, to provide a precise price range of a used car based on it’s condition, demand-supply match and sale’s channel. It has also been trained to dynamically correct itself by accounting for events like new model launches, changes in taxes, and the seasonality of demand and supply.
Spinny claims that the Pricing Engine is already powering more than 1000 transactions a month and has been garnering positive feedback from its users since its closed beta launch 3 months earlier.
The Spinny Star Rating engine, on the other hand works as a scoring mechanism to assist people in finding and comparing different cars. The algorithm behind takes hierarchical anatomy of car to see how each part and its functionality affect overall structure and performance of the car. Factors which affect the desirability of a car such as registration dates and current number of owners are also fed into the rating engine. Taking all factors which affect the buying decision for a buyer, the Engine calculates a final score for each product listing which indicates how good a deal is.
For a long time, the Used Car market had lacked a standardised method of Price discovery and validation that has kept many buyers and sellers from involving in used car transactions. The introduction of the Spinny Star Price and the Spinny Star Rating is a step in the right direction by the company to simplify the way used cars are bought and sold in India.
Do give Spinny a try & share across your feedback/experience in the comments section…
How many times have you encountered a situation where you are looking for Quotes from famous people or everyday quotes etc. and when you eventually search on Google (or Search Engine of your choice), you are bombarded with tons of websites, you might find the Quote butit would again be from an un-trusted source. The information around contemporary quotes is completely scattered and this is the problem that Paris based startup Storyzy (a Trooclick brand) is trying to solve for Information hungry internet consumers !!!
Today we have a Q&A with Stanislas Motte, Co-founder & CEO of Storyzy. We discuss about various aspects of Storyzy, Importance of Content, Entrepreneurial culture in Paris and much more.
Can you give a small background about Storyzy and it’s founders ?
Storyzy is a Trooclick brand. Trooclick was founded in November 2012. The original goal of Trooclick’s founders was to create an automated fact-checking algorithm. The created and launched a plug-in that would fact check financial news articles, but the results were surprising – there were almost no voluntary errors. The team realized that, although errors are interesting, it’s omissions that are even more juicy. What people say, and what they don’t say, are quite revealing. So the team decided to make a pivot in late 2014 to the extraction of reported speech (quotes).
Trooclick was founded by a team of four. For, Stanislas Motte (CEO), Trooclick (Storyzy) is his second company. His first, Diora News, was one of the first news agencies that specialized in mobiles (in 1999). He sold DioraNews to Buongiorno, the world’s third multimedia mobile service company, owned by NTT DoCoMo. Pierre-Albert Ruquier (CMO) has 15 years experience in digital information and news distribution; he was also co-founder and associate CEO of Diora News. Arnaud Jacolin (CFO) is the former financial controller (French subsidiary) turned CFO of Buongiorno where he oversaw a more than $46 million growth in 2010. Ramón Ruti (CTO) contributed to the launch of iTouch Movilisto, a publisher of mobile content listed on the London stock exchange. In 2008, following the purchase of iTouch Movilisto by Buongiorno (bought out by NTT Docomo), he was given the direction of an international team of 15 engineers.
Can you explain about the features of Storyzy and how it can help content publishers with their content ?
Storyzy is the only systematic source for contemporary quotes. It searchable by keyword and topic and always provides source information for each quote (the article, or articles, where the quote can be found) and a date (publication date of article). There is no other quote database (that we know of) that specializes in the systematic indexation of contemporary quotes. For content marketers, Storyzy is helpful for content curation.
Currently, how many sites (approximately) does Storyzy index in order to extract the quotes from the articles ?
The Storyzy algorithm indexes more than 60 thousand publisher websites on a regular basis.
How does your back-end service ensure the genuineness and originality of the quote extracted from any particular website.
We have integrated a sort of automated editorialization into the Storyzy algorithm, which is divided into essentially 3 parts. The first part is all about grammar : The algorithm discards any speeches (quotes) that are not syntactically correct. With the well-formed speeches, two things happen. On the one hand, the speeches are giving an “interest” score. To this the algorithm identifies instances of subjectivity, informativity, comparison, forecasting, etc… the presence of these elements in a speech gives the speech points. This point system allows the algorithm to essentially “rank” quotes based upon a set of assumptions – it can raise to most interesting quotes to the top of a list.
On the other hand, the algorithm is capable of categorizing a speech as being either subjective or objective. In other words: is the speech primarily informative (i.e. “The sky is blue”)? Or is the speech more opinionated (i.e. “I think the sky is beautiful”)? Using the “interesting quotes” points system and the subjective/objective categorization, the Storyzy algorithm is able to highlight the most original and interesting quotes out of a large group.
When it comes to the genuineness of a quote – whether it is correctly attributed to the correct person – our system is only as accurate as the journalists who write the articles from whence the quotes are extracted. Every ounce of information found on Storyzy is extracted from the context of news articles. We are not in the business of fact checking [not anymore], our job is simply to generate structured news data directly from the text of news articles, and to compile data into a user-friendly interface.
Twitter has changed the way news/information is consumed, how exactly is Storyzy different from services like Twitter
Storyzy’s approach to news is unique because it is quote-focused. There are dozens of websites where you can go find motivation or inspirational quotes. The difference between Storyzy and these types of websites is that Storyzy is focused on the the quotes of today. On Storyzy, every quote comes with a date (publication date of associated article) and also with a source (or sometimes many sources) – two things that you don’t find on your typical “find a quote” website. This is important because it allows users to find contemporary brand-relevant quotes to curate and promote their brand message. We like to think of it as a new spin on reactive marketing : Inserting your brand into the buzzing conversational topics of the day [on social media, in the news, or elsewhere].
Can you touch base on the StoryzyAPI [it’s Usage, Pricing, etc.] which can be used by 3rd party dev’s, organizations, bloggers etc.
The Storyzy API has essentially 2 functionalities. The first gives users access to all of Storyzy’s data : quotes, people [plus their affiliation and photo when available], organizations and more. Users can recuperate information from the database via a keyword search or they can recuperate a 24 hour news cycle all in one go. The second gives users access to Storyzy’s engine : they can input news articles [one or more at a time, in almost any format: raw, binary, or a url] and the engine will extract and consolidate, all the news data from each article. The API is available on Mashape under a tiered pricing plan. User can make a small number of calls for free each month, the price goes up by a function of usage and difference endpoints have a different weight (in terms of pricing), due to the fact that the amount of data they deliver varies significantly. Storyzy is open to discuss pricing solutions and can be contacted at api@trooclick.com
Can you explain the revenue model of Storyzy ?
Storyzy’s revenue model is freemium. In 2016, use of the Storyzy interface [and all associated features and functionalities] will be free and use of the Storyzy API is paid. In 2017, premium features and functionalities will be added to the Storyzy interface, possible examples include: historical information, analytics and data visualizations, customized image and video creation, etc… These ideas are all presently being tested with our early adopters.
Can you touch upon Storyzy’s association with GEN Summit that is scheduled for June 2016
To give you some background, the Global Editors’ Network is a cross platform community of editors, committed to sustainable, high-quality journalism. We are delighted to be working in partnership with the organization at this year’s summit, which will bring together the trends set to define journalism in the year to come. We will also be exhibiting beside a number of industry leaders, including Google, the Knight Foundation, Russia Today and many others.
Is Storyzy/Trooclick bootstrapped or funded (angel/VC funded) startup ?
Storyzy [Trooclick] is not yet venture-backed, but does have the financial support of the three French banks. Trooclick’s founders personally invested $1 million in the company since its founding.
What are your thoughts on the way Digital Media is consumed [and future of Digital Media]
At Storyzy, we think it’s clear that it’s important for media companies and publishers to “go with the flow”. Things are changing, new social platforms, new content formats, new everything – every few months. The media companies that survive and flourish will be those that are willing to adapt their methodologies quickly to changing consumer habits. The companies that fail will be those that cling to the past.
Importance of Video in Marketing & Digital Media Consumption
The importance of video marketing cannot be overstated. We have a instagram account. An average photo post gets about 40 likes. The average video post get more than 1000 views and hundreds of likes. Need we say more.
Some thoughts about the startup eco-system in Paris ?
The startup ecosystem is Paris is great. The number of startups in the neighbourhood has grown tremendously in recent years. For example, Storyzy’s office is located in one of the many, brand new startup incubators in Paris. We share the building with probably close to 50 other startup companies.
Some marketing tips for startups ?
Curate news quotes of course! 😉 But quite frankly… curation [either on a blog and/or social media sites] is an excellent solution for the time-poor start-up. We all know that content marketing works – but content creation is usually a large investment. Content curation is a great compromise. In fact, we have written a post about it and you can Marketing Tips for Startups Our golden rule: Think hard about your target audience. What matters to them ? What would be useful to them ? That’s what you should curate and create.
