Introducing NewsBytes – Your Daily Digest!

By Sumedh Chaudhry on August 8, 2015 10 Comments / 4924 views

NewsBytes is a no-frills, no settings news app which provides you all the noteworthy daily events along with their back-dated stories. You can be up-to-date in flat 7 minutes everyday. Started by IIT, IIM and Ivy League alumni, NewsBytes aims to reduce the information overload in your everyday news consumption. Our intelligent back-end engine and highly talented editorial team work in tandem to provide concise and contextual news.

NewsBytes, in essence, is our answer to the information overload over the web. I think our problem is the exact opposite of the problems of the previous generations. They didn’t have access to information, and we have access to almost infinite information. So, how do I make sense out of all that in the least possible time? That is what NewsBytes in its core does.

The intelligent back engine and the editorial team work in tandem to

First, select and pick the noteworthy events of every day. Technically, the engine crawls across the web and give the important events to the editorial team. It is then their discretion to pick the most important ones.

We, then, research and create contextual timelines – a collection of backdated events around them.

Finally, they are presented in a pleasing way in the form of an Android App.

And, we do this every day.

Who are we?

I am one of the founders of NewsBytes. I am a graduate of IIT Roorkee and IIM Ahmedabad with ~2 years of experience working with an investment bank. I started NewsBytes along with 3 other co-founders – Romesh Khaddar, Shikha Chaudhry and Sripriya. Sripriya is my batch-mate from IIT Roorkee and IIM Ahmedabad. Romesh is an alumnus of IIT Guwahati and University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Shikha is my sister as well as my co-founder. She is an alumna of NIT Allahabad and Cornell University with 4+ years of experience working with start-ups.

What inspired us to launch NewsBytes?

Like most start-up stories, ours also started in an apartment – the quintessential garage of India. There are 4 of us who are managing to run the show here, the interesting part is that the degrees of separation between all of us is 1. We are a bunch of highly enthusiastic youngsters and have gotten together to solve the problem which we faced while growing up – the problem of information overload over web.

If we were foodies, we would have opened a restaurant. If we were into fashion, we would have worked to create the ultra modern fashion stores. Sadly, we are a group of impatient geeks and which is why we created the next generation, super fast news app – NewsBytes.

Though on a fundamental level all of us are quite similar, but the similarity ends just there. We live together in Gurgaon, work in that home cum office, have varied interests, aren’t greedy (for the most part), argue a lot but somehow, manage to converge after several shouting matches. Our neighbors think we are unemployed and the automatic GPS algorithms establish that we are a group of housewives! But so far the ride has been phenomenal. And, our inspiration to solve challenging problems while having fun is what binds us together.

What is our philosophy behind NewsBytes in one line?

Our philosophy here is “Think big, Act small, Scale fast”.

The goal for 2015 – We want to be present on the cellphone of *every* student of this country, by the end of 2015.

Check us out at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.elysiumlabs.newsbytes and let us know your thoughts. Your feedback would mean the world to us.

Comments

Sumedh Chaudhry

10 Comments

asha chaudhry August 10, 2015, 5:37 am

hey sumedh,

sounds neat! i really enjoyed reading your showcase post – it reflects a lot of your spirit which is contagious in a good way 🙂

i can totally relate to working out of a house – i run trhs from my home in goa 🙂 thankfully we don’t have many neighbours 🙂

so the expected q – how diff are you from NewsInShorts?

pls add your twitter handles at the end so i can mention them while tweeting.

and see you at #trh Open House on the 22nd!!
Sumedh Chaudhry August 10, 2015, 5:49 am

Hey Asha,

Thanks for your kind words! Apartments have indeed become the startup garages 🙂

I understand that NewsInShorts is doing a fantastic job of summarizing news. However, our idea is to target the first time smartphone users in India. These users have an unsatisfied need of getting easy-to-digest “must-have” news with proper context.

This need is what we aim to fulfill with our app. We also plan to bring in the news/timelines in Hindi and other vernacular languages, going forward. So, if a user doesn’t understand the news in English, she can toggle to read it in her native language.

Cheers,
Sumedh
Sumedh Chaudhry August 10, 2015, 6:37 am

Forgot to mention the twitter handle @NewsBytesApp.

Positioning wise- the long form of journalism is outdated, the short form of journalism doesn’t help you to have meaningful discussions with friends and co-workers. We position NewsBytes somewhere in between. We claim that 7 minutes on our app everyday would help you to consume all the news you ever need to know.
Sridhar Rajendran August 12, 2015, 12:55 pm

Hi Sumedh,

With a plethora of news aggregation apps out there, how do you guys intend to monetize NewsBytes?

Since I do not have an Android device, I am not able to test your app. Is there a link to the source site to read the full article?
Anirudh B Balotiaa August 14, 2015, 5:05 am

As Asha asked, how diff than NewsInShorts…

Nevertheless, giving it a shot from an end-user and also as a UX Designer POV! 🙂
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal August 23, 2015, 2:01 pm

Can we partner with koimoi.com? I own the site and its the #2 B’Wood site in India

We publish 30 new stories day
Sumedh Chaudhry August 25, 2015, 8:03 am

Thanks Alok for your reply. We would more than happy to look at partnership opportunities with koimoi.com.

Please let me know a convenient time to discuss it offline.

Regards,

Sumedh
sumedh.chaudhry@newsbytesapp.com
+91 9958132211
Sumedh Chaudhry August 25, 2015, 8:07 am

Hi Anirudh,

How was your experience using NewsBytes?

With NewsBytes we reduce the information overload in our everyday news consumption. We aim to provide all the noteworthy news (including hyper-local items) in English as well as regional languages along with their back-dated stories.

Please do share your feedback with us.
Sumedh Chaudhry August 25, 2015, 8:10 am

Hi Sridhar,

Yes there is always a link to read the full article. Even though there is a long way to go before we monetize, we have a couple of ideas in mind 1) Advertisements 2) Featured content and 3) Productizing the technology.

Which route we will take depends on our growth trajectory 🙂
asha chaudhry August 25, 2015, 8:30 am

sumedh – just write to alok@rodinhood.com, cc manoj@games2win.com referencing this link. do let him know where you are based etc so manoj can fix a call accordingly.

all the best!