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Journey from Groupshoppy to Voola

It’s been a really long time since I have been to TRHS. My last post was about my struggle here. I had my fair share of criticism and consolation because of that post.

From past 3 years we were trying to build a social E-Commerce platform completely bootstrapped. It was hell of a ride. We enjoyed every bit of it. But like all good things, it had to come to an end. Early in June, we decided to pull the plug. Though it’s still available at www.groupshoppy.com, but its now reduced to a mere product display website. Its still available because we earn enough out of it for covering the server costs. The Server that hosted the Personalization Engine, the server that hosted the Graph Database, the server that hosted the Mongodb, Redis are all now redeployed for something else.

But this post is not about GroupShoppy. Its passe. This post is about the future. Let me tell you what actually happenned. 

We were in our last leg of Beta release of Personalization. Our Android app was also getting ready. While we thought that things are not going that bad, somewhere within we realized that we may never get GroupShoppy to a stage where we had wanted. Then suddenly one fine day, my Co-Founder Ruchika comes to me and says — “Let’s take a break. Lets try something else.” . It was our first WOW moment. And now I strongly believe these words and their timings might be the single largest factor if we succeed in future.

What she really meant, was that, lets get off GroupShoppy, lets try something else and come back to GroupShoppy. It wasn’t a bad idea. And like every entrepreneur, our appetite for risk grew bigger. This time, we thought of building something, that is
1) Global
2) Purely consumer based
3) Mobile Only
4) Prototype can be built in < 2 weeks
5) It should give us signals within 1 month if it has any future.

Over the next 3 days, we wrote down tons of crazy ideas. Then we scrapped every idea that did not satisfy the above 5 points. Next challenge was which one to try first. It was easy, we picked the one which was easiest to build

1) First Idea— Lickin. It was Instagram for Food. Learnt and built it in 1 week. Shared with few of our friends and they tried it, liked it. But we all knew it was redundant. Imagine an app “Ola for White Indicas”

2) Second Idea — Voola. It started out as Instagram for Live streaming. We initially thought Live streaming is starting out again, thanks to Meerkat and Periscope. Even in India we do not have many players, so its worth a try. Built a prototype in 1 week. It could live stream from Android to Android. It had a lag of 30 secs. It was not at all exciting.

But something happenned here, which cannot be explained. We would have normally moved on to our 3rd app even before distributing to our friends(remember, the idea was to build few things and come back to GroupShoppy). But we came across two striking ideas which was our 2nd WOW moment.

1) Allow streaming upto 4 mins with 20 sec replays.
2) Help users overcome the fear of going live, by blurring the screen with hidden identity

This idea suddenly struck like a lightening. We couldn’t stop thinking about it for next 2 days. We had to try it. I got back to work. It was technically complex and challening too. So this is what we decided

  1. Allow streaming upto 4 mins
  2. Save all replays
  3. Hyperlapse/Slow motion the replays to fit into a 20 sec format. So if stream is longer than 20 secs, then hyperlapse, else slow motion. 
  4. Allow user to blur the session & hide their identity before going live 

Over the next 2 weeks we built our 2nd prototype. It could stream upto 4 mins and showed replays in hyperlapsed/slow motion format. And when I gave the prototype to my Co-Founder, she couldn’t stop playing/replaying. It was so much fun. She was utterly astonished what we had done, by fluke. 

Though there was a bit of thinking going about the 4 mins streaming, and 20 sec replay. Even before this, I have had used a lot of Live streaming apps. I observed that because of the nature of current live streaming apps (unlimited time) the engagement always is a downward spiral. Same with the replays as well. Youtube has also taught us that the engagement is highest when videos are smaller than 30 secs.

The Maths is pretty simple. For any live stream (Scheduled Live matches, Scheduled live concerts etc are exceptions), majority of audience will always miss out the live stream. So they will eventually have to view it as replay. So keeping streams for 4 mins allows long enough time to express. When converted to 20 secs replays, users can quickly glance through replays to see if they are worth their time or not.

But are we falling into the “Founder’s Bias”, though we never felt anything like this, even for GroupShoppy. So this time, we had to ask everyone else (other than our friends) to say what they think about our app. We created a good looking website, describing what Voola is and updated our profiles at Twiiter & LinkedIn linking to the website. Then we continued to post as usual.

What happenned next dazzled us. Few accelerators, Investors contacted us directly to know more about what we are doing. This had never happened in our entrepreneurial career (3+ years). Here we have people with money contacting us and we haven’t even launched our app. We knew we were onto something this time. We expanded our reach. We reached out to students and got the exact same response and reaction. 

We now had enough evidence that we have a product that people are willing to use. There’s no looking back now. We channeled all our time, resources to build Voola. We had to pull the plug off GroupShoppy.

So we are proud to officially introduce Voola at THRS.

Voola is a Mobile-only Live streaming app, that allows to stream moments upto 4 mins. These streams are saved and available as 20 sec Hyperlapsed or Slow-mo replays in feed or profile.

As internet is maturing, we are slowing entering into an always-connected world. So we envision Voola to be an app that users will use to Stream and Record their moments simulatenously and come back when they want to revisit those great moments and their interactions.

We have purposefully built it for 4 mins streaming. We may miss out on lot of events streaming which are longer than 4 mins. But we are more about Users and their moments.

We also wanted a lot of control of our app, so we have built the entire infrastructure from scratch. Its not dependent and is not piggy-backing on any other service, which we think is essential for a long term success. We have also successfully reduced latency to 2–3 secs on an average with our current low-end servers.

Voola’s present and **upcoming features:

  1. Users can stream Publicly or **privately
  2. Use realtime screens. Currently we have B/W, Night Mode and our scandalous superstar — Blur screen
  3. Live chat with Emojis
  4. Comment on Replays
  5. By default, replays are 20s hyperlapsed or slow-mo. You can also view original replays.
  6. Streams and Videos are Square. So hold it horizontally or vertically, it does not matter. 
  7. The replays are all viewable within the Feeds (Like Vine, Instagram) 
  8. Share unlimited loves. When you get a gush of loves, you actually get a Love Tsunami on your screen. Its better to experience it, than talk about.
  9. Desktop users can view LiveStream and replays. We have both Flash and Non-flash version
  10. Follow fellow streamers and make new friends. When they share somthing, instantly get notified.
  11. Easy login with username. **You can also link your account to Facebook, Twitter.
  12. Mini Scheduled streams. Start a stream and wait for 10s or 20s to allow friends to join. Your 4 mins timer starts after that.
  13. **Share streams & Replays on Social Media
  14. **Upto HD streaming
  15. **When there is no Internet, the Video gets recorded to the phone, which can later be streamed.

Currently it is available for Android only. You can download it from here.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.voola.android

It is an invite-only app. The invitation code for TRHS is VOOLALOVESTRH

Please show us your support and love by
1. Becoming an early adopter of Voola and sharing feedback.
2. Spreading a word about Voola.

We also want to collaborate with TRH on making a decision for future versions
1. Should the Camera screen be the first screen of App or should the Feed screen be first?

Last but not the least, here is a hyperlapse replay from our Test app.


Gourav & Ruchika,
@das_vicky, @reachruch

www.voola.me
@VoolaApp

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14 Comments

  1. gourav,

    i get goosebumps every time i think of your previous post. and i have a lump in my throat as i type this. i can’t tell you how happy i am for both of you. and how incredibly inspired i am by your resilience and persistence. most of us would’ve been broken by now, but not you two!

    you are the quintessential rodinhooder who re-surfaces after shuffling and re-dealing the cards! you are back in the game!! himanshu mody rightly uses a word for this, RESURRECTION 

    all the best for VOOLA. i’m likely to be in hyd in sept on a personal visit, but i shall try to do a rodinhooder meetup so i can meet all the amazing rodinhooders who live there and who inspire us each day.

    i have one question – does the app support audio?

  2. Thanks for the kind words. I am humbled, but the fact is that resilience and persistence is instilled in us by TRH. Can’t wait to meet you and other rodinhooders in Hyderabad. 

    Yes Live streams have both Audio & Video. Even full length replays have audio and Video. But since compressing audio too does not make sense for hyperlapse, as that would be inaudible anyways, hyperlapse replays do not have sound.

    But we are looking for few good background sounds that we will use to mix all our Hyperlapse/Slow-Mo replays.

  3. This sounds like so much Fun! I loved the journey and the experience!

    Will promote!!

  4. Wow.. That means a lot.

  5. Thank you Alok and Asha. It just gives a lot of enthusiasm and energy. Like Gourav said, it means a lot!!

  6. Super one … this is going to be one great product in the market shortly. Alokji … please press PUSH button from your end … i know the whole world will receive it automatically

    ALL THE BEST VOOLA TEAM 🙂

  7. WOW, what a way to end the day. Your comment will remind me every moment that we have to make Voola better and more widely available.

  8. We were wondering if anyone is willing to cover “Behind the scenes” short interviews with various attendees at the Open House using Voola. Please let us know. 

  9. This is so cool.. 🙂

    Congrats Gourav & Ruchika.. And all the best.. 🙂

  10. gourav – will ping u today. am trying to organise this

  11. Thanks Mubaid. Look forward to see you in Voola 🙂

  12. Neat! Curious, is there a reason/science behind the 4 min mark?

  13. Yes there are few reasons. The reasons revolve around how users are engaged with live streams and videos, in general, based on the length.

  14. I was skeptic at first but when I saw the video at last, your vision came to life for me. I understood in that moment what @Ruchika meant by “what you see and show is the substantial you” in her post 10 reasons why Live Streaming is trending. Will surely download the app and share it with my friends. Will let you guys know our feedback.

    I think you’re onto something. All the very best. 

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