Hi Rodinhooders
I was there in the last OH and pitched our anonymity app GossHip, and I learnt something very critical and it has really helped us convert into this avatar called Opinio.
When I was there standing in front of the crowd at the CREATE A STARTUP session, my legs shook like Presley. The crowd felt like a tiger ready to pounce upon me. But, then Alok sir started looking at our presentation and to be very frank, he was amazing. He completed all my sentences even before I could. The confidence in me grew and I said in my mind, “Come on Farid, these are the friendliest tigers you can get in the wild. Go ahead and grab this opportunity with both hands”
And so began, what I would call the real beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. In the air, I just said, we have ‘Anonymity at will’ in our app and bang, Alok sir loved it and he vouched for it like crazy… even though I remember someone telling me how much people are disliking anonymity in apps.
There were questions everywhere. “How is it better than Ask.fm or Secret.ly or Whisper for that matter???” and well, I just had one thing in mind “anonymity at will”.
Another question came in, “Why would I make groups in your app? Why do you want me to go through all that hassle?” and this time, I didn’t have any answer.
Another question came in “What do I gain out of it? Wouldn’t I get bored in due time ???” and well I was dumbfound again.
And to say again, Alok sir defended us saying… these guys are smart enough… I am sure they will figure out something. The event was great. I learnt that maybe I dont have answers to all my users and these people are really warm, but what would I do when I have another huge set of people jumping in, raising the same questions and asking for a greater experience?
We went back to our drawing board and well, we were sure the answer was anonymous chatrooms made available to people on their own. But what next ? Wouldn’t people get bored again and wouldn’t it die just as how Y! chatrooms did?
And then Asha ma’am ka mail aaya…
“Guys, send me your learnings from the session and tell about your whole experience and we’ll showcase it in the CAS category of trhs.”
“CAS category… hmmm… why do they have categories… just to organise things better or to add context to each post”
BANG! That was the moment… – CONTEXT… that is what is important… that is what makes people come to things… that is what makes sense out of gibberish… WE NEEDED CONTEXTUAL CHATROOMS WITH ANONYMITY AT WILL THAT GIVE YOU SOME VALUE while keeping the experience rich for everyone.
And so here we are… Presenting OPINIO, the contextual debate chatrooms app and platform at ouropinio.com
Opinio is our ambitious attempt to contribute to social apps and make the world a little more cooler…
To be put simply, “We are a place where everyone gets to talk and talk without the qualms of other networks”. Your opinions about important news always get lost in the midst of a million people posting and a bigger million commenting. We make it easier for your opinions to attain all the audience that it deserves, while not loosing the frankness that people have with friends.
Opinio lets you chat and debate freely. Advise people, question them and answer their doubts. Opinio is what we all needed from journalism and media. And yes, we are here.
WE WILL MAKE YOUR OPINIONS MATTER BY GETTING YOUR VOICE TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE AT THE RIGHT TIME. The revolution begins now and the revolution begins here.
So are we Quora in a chat format?
One of the important aspects of my job as an early stage CEO is to protect my company from being “put into a box” too early. Leaving us unsorted makes investors, customers and employees a bit uncomfortable. It’s a part of human consciousness to classify things for better comprehension. Imagine explaining to your Asian parents from 1980-90s what work you do as an investment banker. Trust me, I tried. All I got from my family was “So, how do I open an account with your bank?”
“Opinio is not an ABC for some XYZ.” It seems efficient to communicate this way and keep things intellectually digestible but these motivations do not drive category defining innovations.
No one can give a concrete reply for what we will be in the future for now. But there will be a time for having an extremely clear concept to lock in on, and what we will market against, hire against, build against.
From our desk, we’ll make sure that always
Opinio remains free. Opinio remains liberty. Opinio fulfills the vision of empowering your voice and making you free from the fear of being judged or being bogged down AND MAKING YOUR OPINIO MATTER!!!
YES, OPINIO WILL ALWAYS REMAIN AD-FREE.
It’s your OPINIO and you have the right to express it!
Our Android app is live and running at https://goo.gl/5JSRPC We desperately need the feedback of this community and we hope we can build a SOCIAL MEDIA revolution, right here in India, right here from our awesome community.
My content expert loves to romanticize stuff and this is how we look on the Google Play Store.
Opinio lets you express your opinions on real topics with freedom.
– Engage in interesting debates with people from all walks of life.
– Discover people who you share a stance with.
– Have interesting conversations.
– Gang up with real life journalists, celebrities and actors on issues that matter to you the most.
– Rise in ranks and brag your achievements.
– Be an expert on topics you love and rub shoulders with the best in the field.
Thank you Asha ma’am and Darshan Sir for listening to all my useless banter and helping us build this startup 🙂
And thank you Alok sir for building this great place for people like us 🙂
Also, I’m really sorry for going into complete anonymity myself… but, decide kiya tha “Munh nahin dikhaunga jab tak kuchh achha nahin bana leta”. Thank you Rodinhoods
Waiting for your feedback and comments. Thank you guys 🙂
P.S. We are now VC funded 😉
Like us on Facebook at OurOpinio
Tweet to us at @OurOpinioWe are waiting for your feedback and comments 🙂
You can also give feedback to us directly at @frdahsan, @bhanuism, @ank_sac
Thank you Rodinhoods 🙂
asha chaudhry
kudos to you guys!!
and thank you for thanking us!
if the “contextual inspiration” story is true…. equity toh banta hai :))))))))))))))))))))))))
many many congrats on the funding – keep rocking!!
Karthik M Sundaram
I can think of a use case – Tie up with a news channel (like Times Now/HT) and post the same question on your app – on which the debate is being centered around. This will instantly get more people to download/use your app and also in real time help the news anchor understand the pulse of audience.
With WC coming up, Cricket matches also have such questions – Is Rohit better than VVS or something..
Easiest to tie up would be these leagues (ISL, CTL, Kabbadi etc etc).
Darshan Bhambiru
Congratulations!!! Farid and Bhanu One again in finding YourSelf!!
Sometimes you Find Yourself in the middle of Nowhere,
Sometimes in the middle of Nowhere, you Find Yourself !!!
FB has recently announced its “Fb Groups App” also they had some time back also announced ROOMS which is more or less similar to what you guys are readying for Opinio do check them up (Fb has Billions of users already and it’s tested too, India would cross the 300M users mark for Internet users by the end of this year, as estimated) fb has also been promoting the anonymous part and they are also now on the Onion (Dark Net)
Whatsapp also has started end to end encryption…(also from the fb stables) they have moved to text secure protocol just yesterday! Twitter is enabling BIG data for finding any Tweet from 2006 onwards, so if someone makes an OPINIOn (maybe sometimes) they should be able to DIG it out of the Heap too, easily with Notifications coming if others also add theirs or What is the final Score taking the Direction too.
As an Extension, You can also maybe apart from the App users, enable a Bluetooth Polling option that might be used for Events like our very own TRHS OH or other public events or games competitions for the Public polling or voting too (just thinking aloud) Which could be initiated by One from the app and all in the BT vicinity or range could Poll using the Options made available. Thats also an Opinion right ? (Since we might have Free Wifi everywhere in major towns and cities Being enabled in the coming few years) so better be Future ready/proof Pssst : Internet.org is also from the Fb stables doing the same currently already covering a few countries and a few more in the wings getting ready, Microsoft has also announced similar plans for India and some other countries.
There are too many things which could still be integrated into it and am Sure you guys have already thought some of them as well to add likewise.
Gosship to Opinio, an Anonymous Journey from the Quora on Chat, to the Chat on Glassdoor !
Not to Dissuade or discourage you in any ways just asking to be Better, and One up maybe have Answers ready for the oncoming Questions!!
Still Planning the Office in Mumbai or Moving to Bangalore ?
Ding, Ding Round Two! You are On!!! Onto the Next!! Wish You Good Luck! 🙂
#JustBeingMyself
Puneet Sharma
nice stuff. iOS pe kab aa rahe ho ?
Mahesh Khambadkone
The app looks wonderful – clean and simple. Slick, too. A Make In India candidate !
Three comments :-
1) I read your post from the beginning, so assumed opinio allowed me to be anonymous, so the Facebook login at the start was abit frightening. I think users may not Login without experiencing the product ? Perhaps delay the need to login ?
2) As a first time user, seeing a set of questions (beautifully laid out, I may add) on a first screen, and then immediately taken to a chat screen, is a bit off-putting. Perhaps you should take us to the Poll Results page, and have a button “Discuss?”
3) On poll results, the difference in colors to distinguish Aye and Nay could be starker.
Lovely UI nevertheless.
Mahesh Khambadkone
One more point : I loved I could share my opinions / share the questions. However, rethink what is shared. e.g. when I tried to tweet my comment, the tweet itself says “Mahesh Khambadkone says “, causing my comment to go beyond 140 chars.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Congrats… for LISTENING 🙂 An art long lost
Mohammed Farid Ahsan
arrey ma’am company aapki hai… equity ki baat karke chota mat kariye 😛
Mohammed Farid Ahsan
Yeah that’s a good idea. We are looking into that direction as well. Thanks 🙂
Mohammed Farid Ahsan
aap Android pe BugClipper toh laaiye 😛
Mohammed Farid Ahsan
Yeah, we have taken care of point number 1. We’ll be changing things for 2 in the week to come, and yeah 3rd ke liye designer hire karenge ab… let us have money in the bank first 😛
Abhik Prasad
Farid,
This is quite a neat app (love the UI)
However, couple of things:
1.) It does not allow me to create a topic or question on my own. Any reason why you don’t want to offer the functionality to users to create questions on their own
2.) Not everything is in black and white (based on the two opinion options that are currently there)
Is there a way to add a ~ (I neither agree nor disagree with either of the options but here is my view nonetheless)
These two might help in driving engagement further.
Also, do you think there is a possiblity of simplifying the name further Opinio is a bit of a tongue twister with 3 syllables (O-pi-nio )
Maybe Pinio or Pinyo short for pin your opinion ( btw both pinio.in and pinto.in are available 🙂
All the best
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Can you mail me? We are interested in acquiring your app
Alok@games2win.com