Mangalore, more widely known for buffalo races such as Kadri Kambala, is also the place where some of the applications (apps) for high-end gadgets such as iPhone and iPad are designed and developed.
CodeCraft Technologies, a city-based company set up by young technology professionals, has been developing mobile phone applications that work on various platforms including Windows and Android. Its bouquet has 60 to 70 apps now.
The company describes itself as a software development company that offers a complete designing, development and deployment solutions. The company has developed business applications and games for the iPhone and tailors customised iPad applications and games.
CodeCraft’s CEO Dikshith Rai, an alumnus of St. Aloysius Institute of Computer Science here, handles the company’s product development and technology strategy. He says the flagship product of the company is ‘H2O Polo’, a digitised version of water polo, a game they developed as an application on request. It has been downloaded 100,000 times.
Another successful application, also developed in Mangalore on request, is an animated lesson in anatomy and physiology. It has videos that can be marked, annotated and shared, he says.
The company has developed QuickLapse for App Store. QuickLapse, which has been downloaded 500,000 times, helps a user make recording time-lapse videos possible with a few taps on the phone. It allows the user to adjust video speeds (frames per second) as desired and add music from the library. They can share the video via social media websites and email, said Praveen Castelino, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of the company, and a former an “iPhone evangelist”.
While they do develop applications on request from customers, there are some applications they work on for the sake of technology. While developing such applications is a challenge in itself, marketing it is another, says Mr. Rai.
They said that working in Mangalore made no difference as their work can be done from any location. The company is now scaling up and will be hiring more people, including 20 developers, in six months.
Their parents invested in the company as they had faith in their abilities. The entrepreneurs started the company working at home in Kadri with laptops and an iPod Touch gifted to them by their mothers, said Mr. Rai.
