Hazel Media: Providing Scalable Solutions to Un-tackled Problems
Founded by Manish Malik in 2010, Hazel Media was setup with a primary aim to solve real life problems which can be scaled to the masses, especially for a country like India. A recent TOI report said that more Indians have cellphones compared to toilets. With the penetration of mobiles increasing and smartphones getting cheaper, the skill-set of the masses isn’t increasing proportionately. “Language is a major obstacle when it comes to generalizing something in India” says Manish. Most of the cheaper handsets don’t have the capability to read anything other than English.Targeting this problem, Hazel Media came up with mPustak, a framework to enable creation of vernacular language applications across multiple platforms. Manish and his small dedicated team, along with Aqua Mobiles also came up with cheap mobile devices (Rs 800) that supported multiple languages.
Apart from language, the second hurdle to be crossed over to get the most benefit out of mobility solutions for masses is the quantity of data. “If we move up from the thought cycle of a typical CRM over mobile, the possibilities of transferring huge amounts of data over such devices are huge and can open up many opportunities of conducting businesses differently. However, managing the flow and storage of such amounts of data requires a well thought out framework which we try to provide with MobQuery.” says Manish. MobQuery allows collection and management of data using mobile devices and was launched at Convergence India 2012
A Case Study – Information Collection and Data Analysis for the state of Bihar
As of now, most of the surveys and data collection is carried out through archaic pen and paper methods. Why? “Most of the people employed for these tasks haven’t been exposed to technology,” informs Manish. Not only were information collectors inept to understand English, they hadn’t ever operated a smartphone.
The Solution
MobQuery, powered by mPustak, was able to solve this problem. mPustak enabled local language rendition on mobile screen and MobQuery provided the framework to handle huge chunks of data. In a solution orchestrated with the help of Research In Motion (makers of BlackBerry), the surveyors were provided with the most cost-effective version of BlackBerry devices and MobQuery’s customized mobile application to collect data (text and pictures both). This data collected is used for statistical analysis and further betterment of the maternal health programs in the state.
Typically a project that would have taken 13-14 months was completed in 2 months!
Implications and future plans
These solutions are highly scalable and can be applied in a multitude of verticals. “We have always been a small team that is highly focused on the problem and use appropriate technologies.” informs Manish about their technological strength.
Going on from here, Hazel Media is looking at applying these solutions to areas like Healthcare. More about mPustak and MobQuery at HazelMedia.