#in50hrs Bangalore Kick Off

in50hrs Bangalore is getting kicked off at ThoughtWorks Bangalore office today. The summary of ideas are as follows -

Set of Ideas and Voting Result

Exhibitionary

Satish

A realtime app to record and distribute information about participants at exhibition to the sponsor/participating company stalls. The idea comes from the personal experience of the IdeaSmith, Satish. When he was at a real estate exhibition where after dropping his visiting card at the registration counter all he got were telemarketing calls.

Elevator pitch for the product can be -

For the exhibition goers
Who are genuinely interested in what is being offered at exhibition
The Exhibitionary 
Is a technology solution
That collects the information about the attendees
Unlike in current scenario where information is passed to tele-marketers who pitch irrelevant ads
Our product is going to distribute the information in realtime to the exhibition stalls so that relevant offers can be made

AirBnB for Vehicles

Piyush

The idea explains itself. Tailored to Indian context, where 32% of population owns 2-wheeler compared to 2% who owns a car, the idea is to allow to rent out vehicles including 2-wheelers, with all the security related promises of AirBnB.

Elevator pitch for the product can be -

For the travelers in city
Who are looking to rent a vehicle quickly
The AirBnB 4 Vehicles
Is an online platform
That connects travelers to people willing to rent out their vehicles
Unlike current scenario where the vehicle is rented out by an agency for high price
Our product is going to offer service of security and convenience to all participants at an economical price

As with any idea being copy-pasted from West, this idea ignores a basic fact -

East is East, and West is West

The country where you are frisked at every gate for no reason, where the landowner is legally mandated to inform local police station about new tenants etc., a facility which rents out vehicles to strangers is going to freak out security agencies.
Again, in a country where no one thinks twice before breaking a traffic signal, picks up a street fight, or damages public property with impunity, expecting to respect other's property is highly doubtful. The challenge for this idea is how it adapts to Indian context.

Grocery Zone

Kiran

Purchasing grocery is a tedious and time consuming task. The idea is to make it easy to order the usual set of monthly items by introducing a concept of bundle. A bundle is a template of items selected based on consumption pattern of a household, which can be quickly added to your cart and ordered. If a bundle does not suit your need, you can customize it and save it to be used as a template in future.
Pre-populating shopping cart with bundle items is going to ease over adding items individually, as well as the retail orders don't vary as much month to month, hence will enhance ease of shopping and user experience. Also, from the vendor side, the package of products rather than individual items improve the inventory management.

Elevator pitch for Grocery Zone can be -

For the urban tech savvy user
Who wants the ease of ordering FMCG/groceries online
The Grocery Zone
Is an online platform
That understands your consumption pattern and allows ease of ordering
Unlike other online websites that do not have this feature
Our product is going to provide enhanced user experience and intelligent features

The crux of the implementation, like any other online retail offering, is going to be fulfillment. As of present, the fulfillment is going to be outsourced. The only differentiation that this idea have is a different user experience of online shopping. Those ideas are very easy to copy, and hence does not have a first mover advantage.

VidzMe

Harmeet

The idea of VidzMe is to be a private video blog of an individual. The pitch was very energetic and passionate, and lot of confidence in the idea. Harmeet has been completely invested in his idea, and has travelled from Hyderabad to be present for this event.

Elevator pitch for Vidz Me can be -

For the reluctant blogger
Who is interested in documenting his life
The Vidz Me
Is a online platform
That allows recording of videos
Unlike other products that mainly does video sharing
Our product is going to cater to documenting life through video recordings

Video blogging is not a new idea, there are already many providers with similar services. The challenge for this product is going to be differentiating itself, as well as creating a revenue model to sustain the platform.

News Dorm

Plaban

In the current scenario where you have different sources for same information, News Dorm wants to be one place for all news item. That way you can follow a topic and get information from different sources at central place, discussion happen at central place as well as you can do new topic discoveries.

Stock Dotes

Mallika

Stock Dotes is one of the application that got very good response. The Idea Smith detailed her idea in these points -

1. A place to share general thoughts
2. Share your literary works. e.g. poems, stories, scripts, screenplays
3. Follow others who share works that you are interested in
4. Share your literary works with option to purchase rights at premium

The idea has changed from the initial pitch, to the time it was pitched to me 1-on-1. I would take it as a good sign to adapt based on feedback. One of the strong points about this idea is it caters to a niche.

Elevator pitch for Stock Dotes can be -

For people with artistic side
Who are interested in connecting with community
The Stock Dotes
Is an online platform
That connects the community
Unlike other social sharing application
Our product is going to address specific needs and wants of the community

Course Den

Shahnawaz

Another of a bright chap in the event, Shahnawaz has been very confident in promoting his idea. The vision of Course Den is to introduce disruptive changes in the educational sector through technology. Implementing it piecemeal, the goal for the next 2 days is to build an ebook reader which is going to be used to distribute copyrighted, expensive content that publishers are generally unwilling to share in digital format because of the fear of copy and re-distribution.

Elevator pitch for the Course Den can be -

For students
Who are willing to adopt technology for better educational experience
The Course Den
Is a technology solution
That provides advance tools for study
Unlike the classical method of studying
Our product is going to provide tools to optimize learning

There are many existing solution, foremost of them being Kindle. The next one that pops up is Safari  Books Online by O'reilly. The challenge for this product is going to be user adoption.

Reality Screen

Hemant

In my opinion, this may be one of the most audacious idea ever pitched in a 50 hrs development event. The idea is related to displaying augmented reality on piece of any material using mobile phones. The idea as well as the pitch was too complicated for me to process properly, hence I will leave it there. I will be looking forward to the demo of this idea and see what the Idea smith had in his mind.

Shop Hurry

Shashi

Shop Hurry is an attempt to go one step further in location based search, by not only knowing what shops are around in the local area, but also knowing what things are available inside that shop. The idea can be better explained using an example -
Suppose you come to the city for an interview and then realize you forgot to pack the formals. Not only you need to locate an apparel shop, but the one that serves formal clothes. Over that, if you are specifically interested in the light blue color shirt, that gives you extra confidence to crack those interviews. Shop Hurry serves this niche of locating an item zeroing to the specific user need.

Elevator pitch for Shop Hurry can be

For the urban tech savvy user
Who is interested in quickly locating specific items 
The Shop Hurry
Is an online medium
That locates items based on specified criteria
Unlike other application that only locates on a broad category
Our product is going to be specific and serve accurate results

The original idea also catered to filter the result based on inventory of items at each shop. But even thinking about tasks of syncing inventory of a block of city looks overwhelming. The challenge for the app is going to be to do what it promises, which looks like a very audacious attempt to rewrite the rules of the search industry.

Free Speech

Dheeraj

Dheeraj's idea is to build engagement platforms for attendees at conference. The tools include an online transfer of voice to be used instead of passing around mikes, having the slides and other distributable of the conference handy on the app for quick reference, as well as having a quick look up of who's who so that you can start on opening conversation.

Elevator pitch for Free Speech can be -

For the conference attendee
The Free Speech
Is a mobile application
That provides utilities to make the conference participation effective
Unlike no other application currently available in the market

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Disclaimer

This is an experience report of the first day of #in50hrs event currently going on in Bangalore. It has been put together in limited time, under constrained interaction with other participants at the event. The ideas as detailed above are my understanding of what their owners were trying to pitch, and there are chances of errors based on interpretations.