Twins build start-up with 40 plus apps for user safety

Incidents identified with wrongdoings and mishaps in India have seen a noteworthy spike and along these lines with an end goal to make this world a more secure spot for the vulnerable to live in, a Bangalore-based start-up TrackMyPhones established in 2016 has come up with 20 plus tracker applications stacked with a scope of highlights that would help recoup lost telephones, keep a tab on your kin's location to monitor kids activity.

It all started as a hobby in 2014, when Srihari Karanth and Shrinidhi, both engineers and coders by professions, developed an anti-theft intruder detection app called Thief Tracker, which takes a picture from the front camera, mails it to the user when someone tries to unlock the device and fails multiple times. Soon they noticed that the app was getting fifteen thousand-twenty thousand installs every day. That's when the two decided to leave other ideas and concentrate just on remote monitoring apps for anti-theft, parental control and women safety. TrackMyPhones has over nine million users as of date with more than two million page views every month.

The story behind the commendable innovation

"The users of 'Thief Tracker' app have sent sending feedback and pictures of thieves that the app has captured. That drove us to create anti-theft apps. Also, elders may not be tech-savvy enough to be able to use their smartphones effectively for sending and sharing location with their children. Also, location sharing takes a toll on the device battery. So our remote monitoring apps helped solve both problems at the same time", mentioned Srihari Karanth and Shrinidhi Karanth, Founders of TrackMyPhones, for the need of a special tracker app.

Remote monitoring features

'Track My Phone' is one app which helps keep track of location, takes a picture when one fails to unlock multiple times or whenever there is a SIM change on mobile, get a picture from the front/back camera even enable GPS and internet if it's disabled on the device, all remotely. Women safety is another app which helps women scare others with a loud siren and alert their family with a twenty-second video and picture from front and back camera along with location as SMS.

'Chat Message Tracker' allows the user to track WhatsApp, Messenger, Hangout, Line messages from TrackMyPhones website. Tracking smartphone is another app which has all remote monitoring features built into one.

The uniqueness of the free app

"Most companies who develop similar apps have a large team and huge resources (like office space, servers, etc) and they have to charge the customer in one way or another to keep the company going. Since our apps are free the only challenge will be to make users aware of these apps and they will be happy to use it. And our past experiences in similar field helps us develop new apps or add new features in a very short duration", said Srihari on what separates TrackMyPhones with the competitor.

Revenue generation of the company

"Since all our apps are free the revenue is only via ads. The expense is of around thirty to thirty-five thousand every month on AWS and hosting. The revenue from ads has seen great growth after release of new apps since last year. It has grown over three hundred per cent since last year" added Srihari.

Challenges faced by the team

It's not that everything was smooth they had their fair share of troubles with security apps. Anti-theft apps are useful until the thief factory-resets the device. "We are in talks with smartphone vendors to have our app as default stock app so that it can identity theft and alert its rightful owner even after its factory reset", added Srihari.

The app allows users to track elder parents or younger kids at home and this could be misused to spy on someone as well. "We have to put checks to prevent misuse and have to be thorough with disclaimers and terms of service/policies. Even, for this reason, OS vendors make it hard to use some features like calling for help in 'Women Safety' app without unlocking the phone, which many users want us to provide. The Google Play developer policy also keeps getting updated regularly and we have to keep modifying our apps, often remove some of the functionality, to avoid getting suspended", explained Srihari.

The motivation behind the venture

Srihari quotes marketing genius Ken Blanchard "Feedback is the breakfast of Champions" and shares customer feedback for some of his apps that motivates them to build an app for free. "We might not be champions, but great feedback from customers is why we have all our forty useful apps provided to users for free, no one-time payment no in-app purchases and has helped our users from locating their lost/misplaced/stolen phone, alerting them about intruder to keeping them updated about their dear one's location and we love it when we receive feedbacks of how people lost phones and our app helped them get it back", said Srihari.

"One user, Matt Gibson, had reviewed, 'Brilliant. Lost my phone whilst walking my dog in the woods. The location it gave for my phone was nearly spot on. It was within twenty feet.'. 'This is really Great. Someone stole my phone and I track it down with this app and recovered it within two hours. A person sold my phone to eco-atm and called a cop and they opened the machine there was my phone.' said Harish Pithadia for 'Track My Phone' app.

"I love this app!! My daughter's phone has been taken multiple times at school and been missing for days before it shows up. Happened again today, but we found it within ten minutes!"

Srihari divulged that many have even asked for the address to send gifts and few wanted to talk and thank personally as the apps have helped them in one way or another.

Future prospects for TrackMyPhones

Until six months ago, the twins were running TrackMyPhones and holding on to their respective jobs. Now, however, they devote all their time on developing new apps and on business development. "Our aim is to reach hundred million users for existing apps while we continue to make innovative apps for end users and will also look to move to the B2B space to get a stable revenue," said Srihari.

This story is provided by Digpu. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article.