I used to run a video news app called News Chit. It provided very short videos (10–15 seconds) in Hindi and English which summarized the news for viewer.
We had poured our heart and soul in to the app. We worked day and night to make it come to life. We left our high paying jobs, slept on the floor because we couldn’t afford beds. We stopped having long chat with our loved ones just so we could save money off the phone bill.
After 2 months of working 24*7, it was ready. We launched the app for our friends so that we get some feedback. The app was well received. Feedback was great and we were making changes based on suggestions left, right, and center.
It felt amazing to have someone using something you made with your bare hands.
There was a small problem. With every update we submitted to the app store, our app got banned.
Every time we used, say, Narendra Modi’s photo in the app, we’d get banned for Impersonation or Copyright infringement. It was like we were fighting to keep our app up on Play Store all the damn time.
Eventually, we had to shut down News Chit because of some things not in our control.
A tear or two might have been shed when it was finally taken off from the Play Store for good.
But that is life. You have to move on.
Since then, we’ve been working on the products which are doing good on the internet, namely Inkmat and Streaks. We’ve pushed some updates and improved the services so as to make them smoother and more efficient.
While asking people to download News Chit, we used to get a lot of complaints from people that they were getting low on storage. We always suggested them to delete photos and apps they weren’t using.
We realized that there is a potential opportunity here and thus decided to work on an app which helped people delete photos from their phones. Think of all the photos in your phone which were just some random WhatsApp forwards or a screenshot to share some information but is now useless.
After a lot of brainstorming, we decided that the app should have a Tinder like interface, showing one photo at a time. You swipe right to save it and swipe left to delete it.
This is how the interface looks like right now.
That’s it. We wanted it to be as simple as that.
While using the app, we kept landing on old photos which brought back old memories. Sharing these photos with our friends brought a smile to everyone’s face.
We named the app “Duster” and launched it yesterday by letting our mailing list (https://eepurl.com/by6h-H) know about it.
The response was phenomenal. In the first hour, 4,000+ photos were deleted. Average size of a photo was more than 1MB.
This means people saved more than 4GB of space. To put it into perspective, you can now download 5 more movies, or 500 more songs, or about 80 new games. And obviously, you can click 4,000 more photos now. 🙂
As of this writing, our analytics show more than 15GB of photos have been deleted. We’ve got tons of messages from people who said they didn’t know they had so much junk in their phones and Duster has helped them make it faster.
Going forward, we plan to add videos and apps to our interface. Or a backup option to remove yet keep the photo. Also, need to work on the iOS version as well.
Please checkout the app at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pilanites.duster. I’d love to get some feedback.
If you’d like to see the iOS version of the app, please get on the mailing list.
Thanks for reading. 🙂
asha chaudhry
how old are you shobhit?!
to me you’re the quintessential rodinhooder who just keeps building awesome stuff to really solve problems. i love your spirit!!!
we MUST meet next time i’m in mumbai for an OH 🙂
good luck with DUSTER (LOVE THE NAME!!!)
Shobhit Bakliwal
Thank you so much Asha for your kind words!
I recently turned 23 but sadly might be leaving Mumbai to some other city soon. Would try my best to come to OH though. 🙂
Rituraj Chaturmohta
Hey Shobhit,
One of the neatest idea I have came across in a while and I loved the simple yet intuitive UI.
Quick question – Why would I use this app and consume my memory/speed further, when I can do the same through gallery?
Regards
Rituraj
Shobhit Bakliwal
Simple answer: UX!
In gallery, if you’re like me, you’d have lot of albums with some of those albums having more than 10,000 photos (WhatsApp). To scroll to last image and then delete the images will be a pain! Selecting and deleting works only till a certain point. And you can not review a photo by looking at the full version otherwise all your selection would just be empty.
So the purpose this app serves is to reduce the number of clicks of and making the process easier by bringing all albums in to one place.
Karan Vazirani
@shobhit,
Really nice to read about your journey. Feel you are onto something big with “Duster”
Wish you all the success going forward!
Regards,
Karan Vazirani
Shobhit Bakliwal
Thank you so much Karan! 🙂
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Boss, make this for iPhone also?
Shobhit Bakliwal
Need to generate enough money to buy an iPhone first. 🙂
yuvraj wadhwani
Just discovered this discussion after painfully deleting 800 images from my phone to reclaim my space. Will download it and share feedback 🙂
Shobhit Bakliwal
Hahahha, I also once deleted 1500 odd photos one lazy sunday morning. Do provide some feedback 🙂