DecideQuick, A product that makes online decision making social and quick
So if Google has made our lives easier by bringing answers to all our queries at a single click, DecideQuick (DQ) aims to make things more simpler on the social media side of life. DQ helps you make informed decisions faster through social media by gaining from the experiences of others. It aims to help users take a quick decision on purchases of consumer goods, dining, travel, and education.
The captains of the ship
Shameer Thaha, the CEO, got together with his friends, Karthik Sundarajoo and Jayasooryan KV to set up DQ. Shameer hails from engineering background and the entrepreneurship bug bit him during the time he was heading strategic alliances and marketing at a social media monitoring product company. This he was doing alongside his MBA at SP Jain. While Karthik is a serial entrepreneur who has launched several successful businesses in the Internet security and creative visualization space. At DQ he is incharge of marketing. Jayasooryan,who holds a business degree from IIT Madras, helps the team in user experience design.
How problem transformed into an opportunity
Shameer was searching for a nice holiday destination with his family, which he thought he would decide after consulting his friends. That is when he thought of the idea to build a social decision-making platform that uses social media and the wisdom of the crowd to help users make informed decisions. DQ uses sentinel (big data) analysis and a series of cutting edge algorithms to solve user problem; it goes beyond public domain data and also integrates reviews from your friends on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Although they started in January 2013, the idea was funded a year before launch, by NextBig incubators to the tune of hundred thousand dollars!
Today more than three fourth of the consumers search online before making any purchase decision. More than billion opinions are shared daily, of which social networks account for a fifth of the opinions shared. DQ automates the distillation of this mammoth information and comes up with personalized recommendations and opinions, that the user can actually use. The platform has additional features where the users can seek further help or advice from selected friends or public from within the platform to validate a decision. The service is cloud based and free to all consumers. DQ strives to provide quality service by screening out irrelevant conversations and presenting only focused opinions from friends that really matter.
“We want users to get hooked to DQ. Today we receive about 300 queries a day, but just before Valentine’s day, we received about 200 queries on gifting for Valentine -- and this was when we were just a month old,” says Shameer. DQ doesnt stop after just giving the information. They go a step further and follow up with the user to see if he actually made a decision from all the information he got. “More than three fourth carried out decisions based on the opinions given on DQ portal,” claims Shameer. Based out of Thiruvananthapuram, DQ has a team of seven people. They are looking to provide analytics based on search data and consumer queries on DQ to consumer product companies -- this will also be their way of making money. “Our next step will be to help users buy products they need through our portal. We will help the user to get the best deal through our portal,” envisions Shameer.
Website: DecideQuick