Sibling creativity - doodleblue innovations

It is not everyday you get to hear about the stories of siblings starting up a new venture. Atishe and Nishyta Chordia are one such, a brother-sister duo who started doodleblue Innovations in 2011. Today, doodleblue has grown to a 31-member team which provides complete service in mobile and web application development.

Nishyta, the cofounder and the design lead at the venture, is studying art, history, and design in Chennai; and, Atishe, the CEO of doodleblue, completed his under-graduation from Carnegie Mellon University in mechanical engineering, statistics and economics. Atishe worked as product manager with TaxGopher; later he started AskPundit, and is now putting together the entire doodleblue team.

Atishe is quite specific about the ‘d’ in doodleblue, mentioning that it is always in lowercase. Through doodleblue they want to represent quirkiness, out-of-the-box thinking, and eventually be a powerhouse of creativity. Therefore, every assignment that they take up is a new challenge and the way they approach work is not from the coding perspective, but being a complete service provider.

Atishe says that they have seen many companies launch a mobile app for their businesses, and that most businesses have seen a great return on investment on the app, as not just a marketing gimmick but even to get growth in business. Having seen this shift happen right in front of them, Atishe mentions that it led them to venture into mobile app development space.

The duo has already designed and developed apps for clients and now launched two own apps - Thinking of You and Anger Journal. Thinking of You is an Android and iOS application, which allows you to express yourself in a much better way to your friends and loved ones. Anger Journal on the other hand is an iOS app that can help document things that make you angry and by helping you note down, it hopes to reduce anger in people’s lives.

They tell us that starting up was a challenge, right from the amount of investment they brought in. They were also cautioned by their family and friends, but at the same time were encouraged to go ahead with the venture.

Talking about competition, Nishyta says, they are currently focusing on being creative and finding newer ways to shape the ideas in their mind. As a result, says Nishtya they don’t have much time to think of competition.

While they’ve had their share of obstacles, the two have taken it as a learning curve – even if it means dealing with clients or mundane problems like Internet service. Dealing with a wide range of problems has taught them that essentially all problems can be solved and any obstacle overcome. A piece of advice they give aspiring entrepreneurs is, “You’ve got to enjoy what you do.”