Nikhil Kumar caught up with the CEO of Minglebox, Kavita Iyer, the brains behind the online social networking site dedicated to the college-going youth of India।
Minglebox.com is India’s first social networking website, dedicated solely to the college-going Indian youth। The website (www।minglebox।com) was launched in the month of October 2006, and in just eight months, it boasts of over 20,000 registered users, and growing। Through innovative add-on concepts like the jukebox and streaming videos from Youtube and GoogleVideo, minglebox is on its way to becoming the biggest social networking site of the country।
There is also a blog engine integrated in the site, and perhaps the most intriguing feature is the classification of users according to their schools and colleges। This makes the whole minglebox community one big college fest, where students from various colleges across the country can interact and share their views, opinions and ideas. In order to sign up for minglebox, a user has to select a college he/she belongs to, thus connecting the user automatically to every other member in the same college.
An IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Delhi (Director’s Gold Medallist) alumnus, Kavitha worked at ICICI with several of their internet and marketing initiatives and at Wipro Technologies with their product solutions business. As part of the Tata Administrative Service, she was in the core team that launched Tanishq, one of India’s leading consumer brands. Excerpt from the interview :
In your own words, describe the concept of minglebox।
Think of it this way: minglebox is an online hang-out for college students, which gives them a chance to meet students from all over the country with similar tastes and interests. The fact that the Indian youth is already pretty much into social networking through other services like Orkut and Myspace, makes minglebox a very important add-on, if I may, for students in the age-group of 15-25 years. Of course, the fact that we have incorporated a jukebox and streaming video, along with blogging and groups, make this a very interesting hang-out.
How did the concept start?
Well, there were three of us - Sanjay Aggarwal, Sushma Abburi and myself – all alumni of IIT Delhi, and when we came to Bangalore to work after our studies, we were blown away by the booming internet communication happening here. This was about two years ago, and Orkut was just beginning to make waves here. We did a lot of market surveys to understand the needs and requirements of the youth, and finally decided that a social networking site would be better than, say, a classifieds site. This is the best part of being an entreprenuer – you never know which idea is going to click, and when it does, you are glad that you quit your job and started on your own!
Do you consider Orkut and Myspace as stiff competition?
Not at all. On the contrary, the popularity of these two networks actually helped us market minglebox better. We just had to sell the product, and not the concept of social networking. And we do not claim that our site is better than theirs. We let the users decide. And we have a pretty strong popularity index as of today, in just eight months of launching.A huge problem facing other networking sites is the increasing amount of obscenities and inappropriate material.
How do you plan to combat this?
Since minglebox is meant purely for the Indian youth, we are aware of the boundaries and limitations of our society. We have a strong security policy, and with high-end spam filters and manual monitoring in place, we plan to negate this threat. Also, the fact that this is a close-knit online community, composed mainly of college students, anyone posting inappropriate material is immediately reported by the other users. So, this kind of individual policing also helps keep minglebox clean.
What are the short-term and long-term plans of minglebox?
We are looking at weekly upgrades for minglebox, with newer and better tools being incorporated। It is a little early to speculate on the long term plans since we are just eight months old. Probably, we would look at providing enough material to capture the user’s interest for longer sessions. Today, on an average, a session from log-in to log-out lasts around 29 minutes, which is great, considering the fact that we just started. We are looking to increase this time, and maybe start off with other features like podcasts on the site.
Finally, some words of advice to aspiring entreprenuers?
All I can say is go out there and do it. I’ve been an entreprenuer for almost 11 years now, and I’ve learned that the best way to get the job done is to remove all inhibitions and just go do your work. Hard work has its returns.Kavita Iyer can be reached at her email address:
kavita.iyer@minglebox.com
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