An apt way to succeed

Six IIIT-H students have given wings to their entrepreneurial dreams with Brthe, a tracking app

November 20, 2014 08:16 pm | Updated 11:27 pm IST - Hyderabad

TRACKING SUCCESS: Brthe that was developed by IIIT-H students has garnered appreciation from global and domestic users. Photo: Nagara Gopal

TRACKING SUCCESS: Brthe that was developed by IIIT-H students has garnered appreciation from global and domestic users. Photo: Nagara Gopal

Planning an evening out? Chances are a number of apps on your smartphone come to your rescue — from booking movie tickets, finding an appropriate restaurant, possible offers at the said restaurant, booking a cab etc. But what if all of this could be one seamless procedure and you only had to access one app to get all your work done? This is exactly what six students from IIIT-Hyderabad had in mind when they set about creating Brthe (pronounced Breathe), a tracking app that brings all these services under one umbrella.

Currently in its beta version, this app has grabbed attention globally and even from the Telangana government with the chief minister granting the youngsters seed funding to take their entrepreneurial project forward. The idea took seed when Ravneet Singh Kathuria and Tejas Shah, fourth year students at IIIT-Hyderabad, decided to use their 2013 winter break productively. “We decided not to go home for the holidays and put our minds together to see what we could come up with to realise our entrepreneurial dreams,” says Ravneet.

As students in the Gachibowli area, the duo relied on apps to book movie tickets, restaurant reservations among others rather heavily. Soon they wondered if they could simplify the entire process. “I found it rather tiresome to have to access multiple apps and feed in details in each of them if I was planning an evening out. Which is when Brthe came about and we created a prototype of the app to see how it would work. The app basically pulls in information from various services and brings it under one umbrella for the user. It also gauges usage patterns and throws up offers and suggestions accordingly,” explains Ravneet.

As the duo continued to work on the app they were joined by four other batch mates – Aneeq Dholakia, Vennela Miriyala, Roop Gundeep Singh and Lovepreet Sidhu. Each of the six partners brought with them various skills and strengths to steer the app towards realisation. Their first taste of success came when they won the Hyderabad chapter of Angel Hack and were part of the 27 start-ups from 15 countries that presented their product at the global chapter of Angel Hack in San Francisco last month.

“I think what works for our product is the fact that we are customers ourselves and have a fair idea of what is it that people will be looking for,” says Vennela, who says she always found it annoying to have to enter her details multiple times.

But it hasn’t been all hunky dory for the youngsters. Their biggest challenge has been to convince their families about their entrepreneurial pursuits. “We’re doing engineering and it is easy for us to land well-paying jobs at the end of it. Our families want us to have that security. But none of us want a regular job. I personally, cannot fathom being a job seeker and live a life with no risk. I can’t settle down to a life of complacency,” says Vennela. Her thoughts are shared by the rest of the group.

“I think getting our families to see our vision is the hardest thing to do. It helps that we receive so much support from our mentors at CIE in the university,” chips in Ravneet, adding, “As of now most of our days and nights are spent working on Brthe. We barely attend classes and usually one member of the group attends a class to get us proxy attendance,” he laughs.

Fortunately for them their efforts have been paying off and they are all set to roll out the app on Google Playstore in a month’s time.

“At our stint in the US we managed to turn half the investors into our customers and even got on board two service providers. That was a big boost for us. We would eventually want to launch there as well, so it was good exposure for us,” says Vennela. As of now though the six IIIT-H students are looking forward to completing their course and dedicate their time to their entrepreneurial pursuits.

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