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| Startups look to patenting techs |
| K Rajani Kanth / Chennai/ Hyderabad Mar 29, 2010, 00:24 IST |
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Planning to get married and browsing through matrimonial sites to get the right match? But, if sifting through the profiles manually is putting you off, how about trying ‘intelligent matching’?
This patent-pending technology has been developed by matrimonial site Coupl.in, a Hyderabad-based start up set up in October 2009.
“At Coupl.in, we want to bring a product-centric approach by providing intelligent matching. When you see the matches, it shows a compatibility score that enables a user to decide if it is a right match. We take third-party web services to collect data on 11-12 factors like music (collaborating with music recommendation engines), movies, TV shows, books and education, and professional details ti arrive at the average compatibility score,” says Vivek Krishna G, founder and director (product marketing) of Coupl.in.
Coupl.in was one of the 100-odd Hyderabad-based early-stage startups that showcased their technology innovations at an expo organised recently by the Information Technology and Services Industry Association of Andhra Pradesh (ITsAP). Most of these self-funded companies are upbeat about their patent-pending technologies and are looking at angels to expand business in India.
Says Ashwin Sivakumar, founder and chief of concepts, Jugular Social Media, “Most social media sites are a hobby ground. We wanted to start a new social media site with a lofty goal and with a commoners' vision – use social media as a vehicle to solve people’s crippling problems.”
Just a month-old now, Juglar is currently in a patenting stage and has recently initiated an early adopters programme. “Commercially, we will launch by May time frame and hope our success will be measured by registered users – when the volumes grow into a few hundreds in the next two months,” says this 30-year-old, adding the company is likely to close a smaller round of at least $1 million angel fund shortly.
Empowering other startups right from prototyping to shaping up their products based on the web is IT services company Threshold Software Solutions. "This too is a big business for startups like us," says Bharath Kumar B, chief executive and co-founder of Threshold Software. The company, which is planning to bring a holding through a private equity player in the next couple of weeks, has so far empowered 42 startups across the globe.
Threshold had recently filed patents in the US for two of its products – Virtual DVD and HR Plugin – which is likely to be granted in the next three years.
“Virtual DVD is about merging two video and audio streams into one. The application will be more useful in the education space for localising content. We are already testing out this product with two customers and see huge potential for this in Africa and non-English speaking countries, while HRPlugin will allow research tracking in HR systems more efficiently and in a cost-effective manner,” Kumar says adding the Rs 1.5-crore company aims to grow four-fold in the next one year driven by its two patent-pending products.
Versant Technologies, another city-based company, is upbeat about its new strategic information exchange solution 'Centranex' developed for the Indian market.
Centranex automates business transactions like purchase orders, invoice and shipment documents electronically and integrates with the corresponding ERP systems. "What we have right now in India are ERP points-of-sale products but there is no product as of now in the country, which exchanges the business information in a standard way," claims Chennapa Naidu Darapaneni, founder and chief executive of Versant.
“We have given proofs-of-concept to over 60 large retailers and manufacturers and are now implementing the pilot version with two clients. Once this is over, we will commercially launch it in May,” he says.
The company is looking at raising close to $3 million from angel investors by the year end to grow to the next level.
“With Rs 15 crore revenues from our Indian and US operations, we would like to be a Rs 50-crore company using Centranex in the next three years,” he adds.
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