Minewhat Introduces Personalized Shopping Using “Interest-graph”
The Secret Sauce: Interest graphs. An IG is the dynamic representation of a persons affinity towards different topics.It’s an interesting world with different people and variations like one would never imagine. Different traits define each individual and in turn, their tastes. Only 40 conscious cells act per second while millions are subconscious. This is the intrinsic property that Minewhat had in mind while developing their product.
There are hundreds of eCommerce sites with a sundry of categories which might make it difficult to navigate if you’re not sure what you’re looking for. Minewhat brings to you a collection of products matching your personality from across eCommerce portals. Currently the products are curated from 60 e-commerce companies and they are building a user curation framework to make the system scalable. MineWhat is a self learning platform, it learns the mapping between interest and product from user interactions.
Founded by Pavan Kumar and Janakiram Ganesan, the functional version of Minewhat was launched about a month ago. The founders have a combined experience of about 2 decades in Mobile technology and will be soon launching a mobile version for application as well. They also co-founded Mobiremind solutions in the healthcare sector which facilitated the entire process for blood banks; right from collection to storing to mapping, the system used communication seamlessly to manage the process.
Product Review
You can sign in via facebook and the login process allows you to make all privacy settings (whether you want the app to display updates on your timeline and other things you might want to curate).
Once you’re in, you select whether you want products that match your personality or products for a friend. This option can be used to select a gift for a friend. I decided to give this option a shot and selected Varsha Adusumilli (a dear friend and colleague) from the friend list. Once selected, one needs to put in four traits from the options provided that most closely define the person. Once you’re done with mapping the personality, this is what one would see:
Once selected, the algorith of Minewhat sets to work after you click on ‘Get Products’. The system picks up products that match the personality of the person from all the populated eCommerce sites.
And I can vouch for the accuracy of results as knowing Varsha, I am aware of her affinity for ‘The Beatles’ and there they were, in the product results. The products can then be sorted according to the tabs on the top right corner.
The product is going through design changes but on the functional level, it passes the test.
Globally, Hunch and Gravity set the bar when it comes to understanding and utilizing taste/interest graphs. Minewhat will be trying to bring in a new wave in India and will be providing an option other than the regular recommendation engines in the market.
Initial Barriers and Revenue Streams
There are multiple ways in which Minewhat can be integrated with other services. eCommerce websites are their biggest bet. E-commerce websites can be enabled with personalized interest based shopping for their users. “We’re already in talks with 3-4 players including a big name and we’re positive to close it soon” says Janakiram. “We need one big break to hit it off and then it’d be easier to go through the barriers” adds Pavan.
Give Minewhat a shot here and see what your subconscious has in store.