Mate-On-Go: Guiding people on-the-go based on habit & proximity
Tuesday August 09, 2011 , 3 min Read
130+ users and 7500+ hits within a month of launch
The modern human being has a tendency to spread information and spread it as far and wide as possible. We want our friends to know of our whereabouts or sometimes, we even like to flaunt that a bit. Every time we visit a new place and find a good restaurant, we want people to know. Adding on to this, whenever we plan to go to a new place, the first thing that comes to our mind is whether any of our friends have already visited that place or if there are any good reviews for that place.
This is what led entrepreneurs Prasanta Paul and Sameer Dhamani to come up with the concept of MateOnGo. MateOnGo guides people on-the-go based on their habit and proximity. It displays all shares/findings/reviews of friends and helps users know places better. Thus, the platform acts like a robot which understands people’s habit, proximity and shared content. This platform will be an add-on to existing social network like Facebook, Google+ etc. and provide users’ present location and on-the-go habits (eating/shopping/tracking etc.). For instance, if a user goes out for dinner to a particular restaurant almost every weekend and the platform has knowledge of this habit, the kind of food being enjoyed and the location, the platform can offer the user other available food/restaurant options near to that restaurant matched on taste.
“Location and landmark share is a new concept for the Indian market. But people are finding it interesting to see their friend’s exact position on a map and what their friends are doing on-the-go. We’re getting a very encouraging response from the people.” said Prasanta Paul.
MateOnGo, which has been self-funded till now, is looking for seed/angel investment and is in talks with a couple of investors. The founders plan to tie-up with operators and OEMs to promote their service, once the initial funding round is over.
On being asked about the target space, the entrepreneurs said, “this is a kind of technology which will drive the future market. It will provide a new and smart type of advertisement channel which can route business promotion/deals/offers based on consumers’ habit and their proximity. In a way, it has initiated the next era of habit and proximity aware advertisement.”
Though LBS (Location based service) have been in existence for a few years now, people throughout the world are skeptical about sharing their location. This is the reason the location parameter is still missing from the social space and this is one of the biggest challenges that MateOnGo would face. To avoid this security issue, MateOnGo keeps the landmark/place share of the user within their existing friend circle. Their approach is not only about location share but more about understanding users’ habit and proximity to bring up the content that matches users’ interest. This content will come from friends’ shares and 3rd party content providers.
Within the next year, MateOnGo plans to integrate various content providers e.g. Zomato, SnapDeal etc. into the platform, open the platform API for 3rd party applications and develop the advertisement channel.
To know more, visit http://mateongo.com and share your finds/landmarks. You can create a social map of your existing friends’ network from Facebook as well.
You can also check out the mobile client (Android and iPhone) at http://mateongo.com/m and share places on the go.
So, what do you think about this business idea? Do let us know by writing to us at [email protected].
Jubin Mehta | YourStory.in
