Take a look at these three questions:
- How do we make discovery rock?
- How do we enable small local businesses to advertise better?
- How do we enable low-income groups to benefit from technology faster?
The getarick team’s challenge was to satisfy all 3 situations at the same time and space.
“We discussed social entrepreneurship with a number of friends and colleagues and tried to understand what this phrase meant to them. We talked about the problems people in low-income groups face. We also discussed what would happen if social entrepreneurship is placed in relation to low-income groups anywhere in the world,” said Arjun Murty, Co-founder, BitMoji (getarick is one of the projects they are working on). “This led us to think about how people are discovering today and what ‘social discovery’ actually looks and feels like. When we placed this in the context of social entrepreneurship and low-income groups, these three questions hit us and the idea for getarick germinated,” added Arjun.
getarick is one of the projects the BitMoji team is working on. The core team comprises of Arjun Murthy, the co-founder and design geek. He takes care of UI/UX designs and is based out of Geneva, Switzerland. Murali Allada, the other co-founder and the engineer in the team, is based out of Seattle, USA. Sonja Leix is responsible for how the getarick and BitMoji websites look. She designs out of New York, USA. BitMoji, which was earlier known as Nuage9, was setup 14 months back in Geneva. The getarick project initiated 6 months back.
“Users can subscribe to specially curated routes by SMS and discover amazing place to eat, shop or just hang-out. And discover, the way we do,” Arjun explained how getarick works. “getarick drivers are carefully chosen by us to service these curated routes at any time of day or night,” added Arjun.
The getarick project is being piloted in India first, in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai. They are targeting Indians and foreigners who love to discover new places and experience India in a different way. “Predicting the size of the market at this stage would be very premature as it is a new concept and no one is doing it. But the number of people that use autos everyday is simply mind-boggling. The need for small local-businesses to advertise more efficiently also has never been greater,” said Arjun. “It is going to be a challenging process as it entails getting people to start looking at the auto in a whole new way,” added Arjun. He hopes to make taking an auto into the coolest thing if they manage to get their model across within the next 18 months.
They primary revenue will be generated through location based advertising services to small businesses en route, through SMS and the cost of the SMS discovery environment that will be delivered to the getarick customer. getarick has got off to a great start with 209 unique visitors within the first 36 hours. Over 50 interested customers contacted them within the first 24 hours. They have also received a lot of attention from angel investors in India and USA.
The success of getarick hinges on the feedback the pilot project receives in India. They hope to take it to other developing countries and use similar cultural icons to mobilize the discovery environment.
We at YourStory.in think that getarick is an awesome concept and really change the way travellers discover a city. We wish them all the best and will be keenly following the progress of BitMoji and getarick.
To find out more, visit http://bitmoji.com/
