Taggito - Providers of NFC based, Contact-less Technology Solutions To Boost Consumer Businesses

Thursday January 19, 2012 , 4 min Read

So what is the first thing that’d strike you when I said “Spain”? European architecture, spanish accents with rolling Rs or salsa dances? To me, it’d flash images of one of the most talented football team with Fabregas and Casillas maybe. But how many of us would associate technology with Spain? I know one person who did.Presenting to you, Vaibhav Puri, founder of Madrid based, Taggito - a mobile technology company, focussed on developing products and applications using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. NFC is a Radio Frequency (RF) technology that operates at 13.56 Mhz.Their first NFC product was, and still is, NFC tags- that they currently sell on their online store. Merging the word “Tag” with their Spanish background, they came up with the name “Taggito”.

So what this technology is all about, and what they particularly love about it, is its user intuitiveness, wherein users can simply tap their mobile phones to access information, exchange music, pay for items, ride the metro etc. NFC is a contactless technology that allows users to use their mobile phones for various touch-based applications. So basically, an NFC enabled mobile phone can be used to make payments (e.g. Google Wallet) or to touch an interesting movie poster with your phone to download its trailer. They also have an Online store and Tag Manager that lets you purchase and manage and analyse your tags.

Operational since October 2011 and having a team of 3 members, they built and released their first prototype within the first month. A content management system of NFC tags, they saw an increasing need of marketers and advertisers who ran NFC campaigns to have an easy-to-use solution that allowed them manage these campaigns via a web application.

Thrilled with the response, they continue to build new applications that they can monetize. In 2012, Taggito claims to earn its revenue from a bunch of different applications focussed around NFC.

So how does Taggito meet its relevant audience? They work with social media tremendously and also through word of mouth referrals. They currently operate across Europe and are looking to ramp up their presence in UAE, Singapore and India.

As an entrepreneur in mobile space, Vaibhav too had several challenges to face. “Talent”, he says. “We believe our success depends on our people. Finding people with the right technical skills and attitude is always a challenge that extends beyond mobile.” So yes they are hiring! They now look for good engineers to work in both their hardware and software application side of the business. As for the monetary aspect of starting up and all the scary shades around raising funds, Vaibhav deals with it very positively. “At the moment, we are completely bootstrapped and enjoy the challenges of building a business with limited funds”, he chirps confidently. So they are not actively on the look-out of funding per se, but are open towards working with angels or venture capitalists who can add strategic value more than financial.

So are there similar market players? I asked Vaibhav in my broken Spanish, *- Cómo es la competencia*? To which the Madrid based entrepreneur replied, “There are a few companies working in the NFC space. Given the evolution phase NFC is in, each company that I have seen so far, is in its pilot stages developing applications that defer in terms of target market and objectives. However, within more developed NFC markets- such as USA, there is tremendous competition in applications related to mobile payments etc. using NFC.”

NFC aims to take-off in 2012 and this is great opportunity for the developer community in India to be ahead of the curve and build applications that support NFC either on Android, Nokia or Blackberry platforms. Taggito urges developers interested in NFC to participate in this trend and make India an innovator on the NFC front as well. Afterall with the technology boom in India, a wise man would know that he who strikes first, shall strike twice! Or as they say in Spanish "El que da primero, da dos veces!”

For more information please check out Taggito and do share your thoughts with us by dropping a comment below!

- Abhilasha Dafria

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