| Entrepreneurs from tri-state area focus on online ventures |
21st Dec 2013
|
 | 
Harsimarbir Singh & Gaurav Bagga, founders of Woopiee.
iving without an Internet connection today has become next to impossible. With technology becoming increasingly user-friendly, the spectrum has been broadened for tech-savvy youngsters. Not just IT professionals but youth with different backgrounds are making waves in the world of technology and exploring greater horizons with zeal, passion and utmost inquisitiveness to carve a niche for themselves.
Getting out of India and venturing abroad for better personal and professional growth has been a common trend among youth across the country, which Chandigarh-residents Harsimarbir Singh and Gaurav Bagga reversed. Investment banker and data scientist respectively, they gave up well paying jobs abroad and returned to India to chase their dreams. Enter Whoopiee, a free mobile application for Android and iOS-based phones that they created, which lists more than 200 restaurants, gyms, salons and apparel stores in Chandigarh, Panchkula, Mohali and Ludhiana. It also collates details of over 500 offers and discounts being offered in the different outlets of the stores in question.
"As students, words like offers, discounts, sale et al always attracted us. Even today, who doesn't want a great discounts or a good deal? The biggest setback sometimes is arranging a credit card and making the payment online to purchase an existing deal. That's what inspired us to create Whoopiee. It shares real time offers and is very convenient to use. You don't need to shell out money for an offer, or even take a printout. Just identify the offer that catches your fancy and make your way to the store," smiles Harsimarbir.
"Necessity is the mother of invention." While looking up some words on the Internet, Class 10 student Shahbaz Singh realised that there is no website or software that helps you spell check the Punjabi language. Another Chandigarh resident, Shahbaz Singh took on the responsibility of solving this problem. Two years of hard work and dedication allowed Singh to develop Gurakhar, a software that spell checks over 1,00,000 words accurately and efficiently.
"The usage of the Punjabi language has increased over the years, which has also increased the instances of spelling mistakes. Conceptualising Gurakhar for my mother tongue, and creating a huge database of Punjabi words was challenging, but this was more of a holy mission for me, which I am glad I successfully accomplished," he explains, clearly elated.
Curious to get to know new people without approaching them physically led to the invention of mobile application 'Mink Me'. Chandigarh-based Abhishek Gupta, boasting a Masters degree in management from Harvard University created this application, which is available on Android and Apple. "I was sitting in a bar when I thought of connecting with people in my city, but
I couldn't figure out how," Abhishek tells Guardian20, adding that he is working on bringing this application to Blackberry devices soon.
Anshul Goyal, a commerce graduate, tried to create an e-mail ID with just his name, but it was already taken. Enter Email.biz, which took eight years to complete, and now offers a service that allows users to choose e-mail IDs of their choice from over 20,000 domain names.
Anshul says, "The number of e-mail users was negligible till a few years ago, and searching an e-mail id of your choice was easy on the existing e-mail providers. Getting the e-mail address you want today has become next to impossible unless you have a really unique username, or one that includes several special characters. Email.biz has attracted 1.5 lakh registered users within three months of its launch and that's quite an achievement for me."
http://www.sunday-guardian.com/technologic/entrepreneurs-from-tri-state-area-focus-on-online-ventures
|
No comments:
Post a Comment