Connected to a celebrity? Log on to Parivartree site to find more

Ever wondered whether you have some connection with the legendary superstar Amitabh Bachchan?

Though a filial connection is not guaranteed, you might as well discover some distant connection with him. Similarly with other celebrities from the world of politics, fashion, glamour, education and sports too.

This is how you can find out – log on to Parivartree.com’s home page and discover new family connections every day. If you are lucky, you might chance upon a star connection simply by tracing the branches of your family tree, created by you or one of your distant relatives.

A site whose name in Hindi means family (parivar), it allows the user to create a family tree, discover new family members, share their photos and videos. Parivartree is a private social network platform for a complete family eco-system.

There are distinct features which makes this network unique – a family tree where people can build and grow the family tree collaboratively and collectively with their relatives. There is a ‘Tickle’ feature which allows users to share their thoughts, photos and videos with different family circles. The ‘Studio’ feature allows creating repository of photos and videos with albums of family events. With the ‘Cloud Share’ feature, users can create a repository of important documents pertaining to each family member by each of them or by their guardian.

At a time when social networking has emerged as the biggest platform connecting people, Parivartree is indeed a welcome concept where individuals get to contact their relatives who otherwise they don’t even know exist.

“Most of the time, people meet their close relatives during family functions, that too, once in three years and never create a touch point again. Our platform is an attempt to enable family bonding which has clearly gone missing due to paucity of time in this fast-paced world,” says Manoj Ladi, the brain behind Parivartree.

Bringing families together

“I have a large but globally distributed family network. That really set me thinking and thus was born the concept of Parivartree,” says Manoj’s wife Puja, the Co-founder of this venture. A homemaker, Puja’s two kids keep her occupied most of the time. When she is free, she dons the entrepreneur hat to perfection by being Parivartree’s Director.

Challenges faced in creating the app

The app and web development for Parivartree started in June last year. Throughout the development process the team faced multiple challenges related to development and the flow of the app since many features had to be incorporated into one product.

Post-launch, the next big challenge was marketing and creating a wider reach so that more users would try the product. That triggered the creation of a concept video, which provides users a better insight on the objective.

Parivartree’s website was launched in December 2014 and followed it up by with Android and iOS app in April 2015.

The free app is a unique tool connecting different families and a journey which helps discover new members in the extended family. It acts like a repository of families with respect to lineage, family events and even family history.

Business model

The site has 4,000 unique users as on date. The app is being upgraded and more features being added to it now. The app with all its features in place will be launched in the marketplace afresh in June this year.

A complete family engagement system, word-of-mouth was its only marketing tool till the creators took the Facebook route in the last few months.

One interesting feature is the merger of trees. Once several trees are created, a merger can happen, with one tree still growing exponentially.

The creators of this venture are very clear about one thing – they want to attract users. Advertising is their main source of revenue and they propose to start matrimonial service in some time too to raise money.

The team is looking at a million dollar funding from venture capitalists soon. When they started off, it was the team’s own money with another $100,000 US from an acquaintance.

To get more users on the platform, Parivartree is marketing the app through social media Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram. The app will also be marketed through its own blog, which will explain to users the different aspects of the platform.

Parivartree can be found on the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

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