An Interest In:
Web News this Week
- April 19, 2024
- April 18, 2024
- April 17, 2024
- April 16, 2024
- April 15, 2024
- April 14, 2024
- April 13, 2024
Some of Our Sources
- Engadget
- Mashable
- TutsPlus - Code
- Joshua Blankenship
- Spoon Graphics
- Smashing Apps
- TutsPlus - Design
- CSS Globe
- Spyre Studios
- Daily Now
Help Webnuz
Referal links:
January 24, 2014 11:55 pm GMT
Co-founders of Innoz, an SMS-based offline search engine in India that has answered over 1 billion queries on mobile phones, are raising $500,000 in Seed funding from 500 Startups and other angel investors to build a Jelly-like app targeted at the U.S. market. The appis called Quest and it’scurrently available onAndroid. An iOS version will be out in few days. Quest will combine its question-and-answer platform with automatic geotagging to help users find nearby people who can answer questions on the best restaurants to dine, places to see around, and so on. Unlike Jelly, which seeks answers from existing social networks like Facebook and Twitter users, Quest plans to build its own registered community of users who will help each other with what they know the best. The founders — Deepak Ravindran and Mohammed Hisamuddin — are relocating from their Bangalore offices to join 500 Startups’ latest batch starting this February. The duo have already got AltaVista founder Louis Monier, Pranav Mistry (director of research at Samsung) and Asha Jadeja, an angel investor, as advisors on the board. “Quest is a people powered answering app where the human mind will be the algorithm behind our answers. It is a natural transition for us from SMS Search to Quest, because we will still be doing what we love the most — answering people’s queries, albeit with a personal touch,” said Deepak. Both Deepak and Hisamuddin declined to offer comments on the specific investors. Another important development as part of their new gig is that the foundersare buying back their stakes in Innoz from the only external investor, Seedfund,that had invested around $3 million in the company. Again, the founders requested not to be quizzed on the specifics of this buyback. Innoz has been profitable for last three years and is expected to report revenues of around $4 million this year. So a buyback does not seem that difficult to pull off. At the outset, comparing an unknown startup with Jelly might sound like a wild idea, especially since Jelly isthe brainchild of Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, and is perhaps among the hottest startups in the Valley today (going by the profile ofearly users that include Mark Zuckerberg). There are many things that Questdoes differently and perhaps Jelly promises to do much better, but both of them are aimed at leveraging networks of real people to answer questions. For its part, Jelly
Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/_d5pyM97eEQ/
Founders Of Worlds Largest Offline Search Engine Raise $500K To Build A Jelly Rival
Co-founders of Innoz, an SMS-based offline search engine in India that has answered over 1 billion queries on mobile phones, are raising $500,000 in Seed funding from 500 Startups and other angel investors to build a Jelly-like app targeted at the U.S. market. The appis called Quest and it’scurrently available onAndroid. An iOS version will be out in few days. Quest will combine its question-and-answer platform with automatic geotagging to help users find nearby people who can answer questions on the best restaurants to dine, places to see around, and so on. Unlike Jelly, which seeks answers from existing social networks like Facebook and Twitter users, Quest plans to build its own registered community of users who will help each other with what they know the best. The founders — Deepak Ravindran and Mohammed Hisamuddin — are relocating from their Bangalore offices to join 500 Startups’ latest batch starting this February. The duo have already got AltaVista founder Louis Monier, Pranav Mistry (director of research at Samsung) and Asha Jadeja, an angel investor, as advisors on the board. “Quest is a people powered answering app where the human mind will be the algorithm behind our answers. It is a natural transition for us from SMS Search to Quest, because we will still be doing what we love the most — answering people’s queries, albeit with a personal touch,” said Deepak. Both Deepak and Hisamuddin declined to offer comments on the specific investors. Another important development as part of their new gig is that the foundersare buying back their stakes in Innoz from the only external investor, Seedfund,that had invested around $3 million in the company. Again, the founders requested not to be quizzed on the specifics of this buyback. Innoz has been profitable for last three years and is expected to report revenues of around $4 million this year. So a buyback does not seem that difficult to pull off. At the outset, comparing an unknown startup with Jelly might sound like a wild idea, especially since Jelly isthe brainchild of Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, and is perhaps among the hottest startups in the Valley today (going by the profile ofearly users that include Mark Zuckerberg). There are many things that Questdoes differently and perhaps Jelly promises to do much better, but both of them are aimed at leveraging networks of real people to answer questions. For its part, JellyOriginal Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/_d5pyM97eEQ/
Share this article:
Tweet
View Full Article
Techcrunch
TechCrunch is a leading technology blog, dedicated to obsessively profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news.More About this Source Visit Techcrunch