This fun selfie competition app got its founder slapped

Besides helping users connect with friends, Znapin is a valuable tool for brands to understand their target audiences, reports Tech in Asia

Friends tend to bring out the crazy in us. But in this new app, that’s precisely the plan.
 

Znapin offers challenges around which users can take selfies and videos – and then you can challenge your friends, in public or private. There are things like doing a chicken dance, eating a banana, taking a selfie with your toe, or stuffing thirty french fries in your mouth. 
 

Znapin was founded in Mumbai, India, by Yash Kotak, Nyha Shree, and Ankur Kumar. Kotak is a techie at heart and has been designing websites since 1995. Kotak and Shree have worked on many other ventures together, such as Corporate Shift, KIncredible Tech, SonykLabs, and Becomingg Magazine. Kumar is the co-founder and CTO of Znapin and Grannyads – a start-up that helps advertisers with affiliate marketing.
 

Znapin stands for zippier new-age personal interactive network. It took Kotak about 45 minutes at Bru World Café in Mumbai to come up with that. Luckily for him, the domain name was readily available. However, the app didn’t always have this name. It was initially called SelfieChallenge. It was Guy Kawasaki who suggested that the app has potential but the name SelfieChallenge would hinder its growth. This instigated the team to come up with the zingier name.
 

Apart from offering a fun way for users to connect with friends, Znapin is proving to be a valuable tool for brands to understand their target audiences. It can be used for customer profiling and affinity marketing. By throwing sponsored selfie challenges, brands can enhance their visibility, and by incentivizing users with freebies and discounts for participating in those challenges, enhance brand loyalty. That’s how the team wants to make money from the app. But Kotak says the primary focus right now is enhancing the app’s user base.
 

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.