Sifting through countless news items that we aren’t interested, could be a frustrating experience. What if there was a solution to that?
Vinay Anand and Siddharth Goliya are the founders of Pipes, a news app that allows users to track the things they love. Pipes lets you choose your favorite topic, celebrity, gadget or anything that you want to follow and get updates as soon as some news related to them gets published. We really have a need to personalise the way we get our news, and that’s exactly what Pipes does for you.
“You could choose Kim Kardashian, Narendra Modi, Manchester United, Google or iPhone and as long as they’re making news, you’ll find them on Pipes app and can track them. Pipes is also the first Indian news apps to summarise news. We’re also only maybe in the Top 5 in the world” Vinay says.
Vinay says that they were lucky to have an incredibly self-motivated team who are dedicated to making the product, the best available. Pipes is Vinay and Siddharth’s 4th Startup together.
“We’ve nurtured this team right from our Doodle days and you have to really come to our office to see the energy, passion, enthusiasm our core team of 5 have for Pipes. It’s magical. The second issue we faced was with technology. The issue was not that we didn’t understand it. Doodle used to primarily build websites & apps for other companies so that experience was great. We made a couple of poor decisions before our CTO, Tushar Cheulkar came in & straightened things out. Now, we have it all streamlined & under control.” says Vinay.
What makes Pipes, well Pipes?
The whole idea that you can choose just a topic and not an entire category or a source on a mobile platform makes the experience simple and easier. In one view, you get News, Twitter feed & Wikipedia about something you love. Also, you get a Summary, which is Summarized news about your favorite Pipe. You could even get notified through a Push notification, which you can customize to show once or twice a day.
Vinay believes that a user’s attention span towards any app is short-lived throughout the day and he is competing for a piece of their time rather than another app directly. Though their close competitor is Flipboard.
“We’re extremely bullish on where Pipes could be. With ‘What’s hot’ coming in, we’re looking to start monetising Pipes. Additionally, we’re looking to start leasing ‘Toast’ to other businesses both nationally & Internationally. We’re also looking to set up an entire team and focus only on Pipes to ensure Pipes has a global presence. Deep down, we really believe that Pipes could be on million of smartphones across the world and could be the go to app for users when they’re looking to track things they love. Moreover, 75% of our users are from the West” he explains.
Their target audiences are large, consisting of people who love to pick and follow individual topics. They are focusing on smaller countries for now before expanding to larger demographics.
They have plans for generating sizeable revenue. Pipes is built an intellectual property in ‘Toast’ which is a parser that cleans up Ads, Headers & Footers and all the drivel from websites giving you the clean content to read.
Additionally, they’re adding a great new feature inside Pipes called ‘What’s Hot’ which shows you trending Pipes / searches across the world. This is localized, so this gives them room for a lot of ad revenue. “And, it’ll never look like an ad, thus keeping the user experience extremely smooth.” he adds.
Follow what interests you, here: http://pipesapp.com
