Chandigarh-based start-up to raise Rs 1.9 crore

The company is in talks with couple of investors and hopes to close the deal soon

Chandigarh-based VoteChat, a start-up company, is planning to raise Rs 1.9 crore to fund its expansion plans and product development. The company is in talks with couple of investors and hope to close the deal soon.

Speaking to Business Standard, VoteChat Chief Product Officer and co-founder, Felipe Pires said, “At present, we are in talks with couple of investors and hope to raise $3,00,000 to fund our expansion plans and product development.”

Meanwhile, the company launched a new Mobile app ‘VoteChat’ for Apple stores, which would be available from Tuesday. According to the Felipe, the application would be the game changer for the industry and can be used by various FMCG companies to market and collect feedback from the customers about a particular product.

On being asked about VoteChat, he added, “VoteChat is a group messaging mobile app where ideas and messages are exchanged by friends and then voted on by the group. It’s like Quora meets What's App. It aims to curate the chatting conversation and highlight the most important topics through voting. The platform is designed to quickly get feedback on potential ideas or plans for the group and then elect winners for the best ideas, which get logged on the group’s chatting history, thus becoming more prominent.”

The voting mechanism can be applied to both niche or broad interest groups to decide on the most interesting topic in a discussion, no matter the number of people. This ensures that a large group can have many people chatting without cluttering the screen, because the conversation always converges towards a ‘winning topic’ which gets logged and then the conversation moves on.

He added, “The algorithm of the voting mechanism is calculated by dividing the number of people chatting by the number of ideas. Every time a winner is chosen, the cycle is restarted and the winning post is recorded as a winner. Until today, there hasn’t been an app that allowed for a such a smooth creation of an idea directory through voting. This will ensure a high dose of entertainment for users looking for interesting, snackable content and also for group of friends trying to highlight the most important topics of their conversation.”

Commenting about new features unique to VoteChat he added, “ free, unlimited decision making group creation and interaction,  a “Vote” feature along with the chat that lets you promote the best ideas, the ability to be a ‘winner’ and thought leader amongst your friends and colleagues, reach a conclusion faster as soon as one idea has enough votes to qualify for the winning position,  short, easily digestible content etc.