We know how smartphones, despite having made great leaps in technology, can still be a bit annoying when it comes to basic productivity. For instance, when you get a call from an unknown number and want to store it in your contacts list, there are at least two or more steps involved: click, choose either ‘create new/add to existing’, enter first name/last name and so on. How about you just, with one touch, edit the name right then and there? That is just one of the several useful features offered by Rolo, an Android-only app that claims to make your contacts management a breeze.
Developed by Chennai-based Netmine Mobile Innovations Private Limited, Rolo currently has a 4.4-star rating (from 400-plus users) on Play Store. One of the first ‘cleanups’ the app does after installation is merging duplicate contacts and providing suggestions for ones that look similar. The decluttering algorithm is indeed impressive.
On Rolo, there’s a sub-menu for every contact to set reminders (birthdays, meetings etc), personalised notes and scheduled SMS (which was a bit problematic on a test run, as it kept throwing up a ‘number invalid’ error for some contacts). The SMS feature itself seems to be direct competition to WhatsApp, with groups and double-ticks to notify delivery completion. Murali Rangarajan, co-founder and CTO at Netmine Mobile Innovations, denies this. “We’re not really challenging them. In fact, we’re developing a priority messaging feature — where the phone’s internet data will be used to send the message. If it doesn’t, say by 30 seconds, it will be sent over the SMS platform,” he says. This feature was rolled out for a trial run last week, and makes SMS between Rolo users free.
The USP of the whole package seems to be the Roloscope — a hovering badge of the contact when you get a call. Tap on it and you see your complete history with the caller (SMSs, emails, calls). This very feature seems to be the reason they have partnered with the immensely-successful start-up Freshdesk to create a customer support solution for small and medium-sized businesses.
There’s a business card scanner too that lets you scan up to 10 contacts for free. Rolo’s clean look and feel seamlessly integrates with the minimalism of an Android OS; for a premium price, you get an ad-free version.
Rangarajan says that his team has received largely positive responses for Rolo and are having a hard time coping with new feature requests. Srinath Rajaram, CEO at Netmine Mobile Innovations, says that they are constantly asked for an iOS app. “We are trying to figure out the best way to bring Rolo to iOS, as it limits us in our capability to offer some of our best features. We think we are a quarter away from an iOS version.”
