The Founders
Musaib, the co-founder of Ideoholic hails from the Multicultural and historic town of Bidar, Karnataka. Musaib is a computer science undergrad from Guru Nanak College, bidar. Musaib started his career, paving his way in the world of Java development, & after a string of developer jobs at well-known companies such as Accenture.
Reehan Khan is the co-founder of Ideoholic, Reehan hails from a town called Tilavalli in Haveri district. After finishing BE from UBDTCE, Davanagere Reehan joined Infosys and took a career break to pursue M.Tech at IIIT-Bangalore. Reehan has worked with several companies, including Infosys, Motorola, Alcatel Lucent, and Alten Calsoft Labs Reehan decided to take the plunge into a more meaningful contribution to society.
What is Ideoholic
Ideoholic is a team of socio-technical geeks having a firm belief in applying digital solutions for social good.
Leveraging on the existing technologies, the company adds unique value to convert them into affordable solutions, thus a step closer to driving the business towards inclusive software solutions.
Ideoholic works on the foss (free and open-source) principles – making digital technologies more affordable and ethical.
Check out the website for Ideoholic here.
The idea behind starting Ideoholic
“Success is maintained and achieved by those who try and keep trying.”
While talking to TimesNext, Musaib told us that they started with a group of volunteers interested in working on social issues using digital technologies. Musaib and Reehan felt that technologists lack the understanding of social complexities in order to be able to design and develop appropriate digital solutions, which can help the society in a sustainable manner. This inspired them, and they decided to create a startup that can collaborate with the social institutions, get the domain knowledge from them, apply their technological expertise, and co-develop digital solutions.
Challenges faced in the Outset
The duo told us that there has always been a gap between the technology practitioners and the field experts.
The field experts have an ideal view of technology and expect it to work more or less like magic. The technologists provide alternatives within the limitations of the existing technology. Finding that sweet spot of acceptability from both sides was the most challenging aspect for them.
Recent collaborations
The duo told us that the company has developed a Microfinance Solution that can calculate Service charges on loans dynamically based upon the operational expense of the Institution for Interest-Free Co-operatives.
This scientific calculation methodology has been formalized and currently being used by Taqwaa Advisory and Shariah Investment Solution (P) LTD. (TASIS).
The company recently collaborated with the Sahulat Microfinance Society on this and used Grameen Bank’s Mifos X to develop the solution.
Hitting the first milestone
The company considers its first milestone breakthrough when they were able to successfully validate their integration by live field testing at an MFI that has been functional for 45 years and finally getting approval from TASIS.
Current growth of the company
The company has flourished so well in no time and has acquired their initial adopters and are closely working with them to get feedback and improve on quality and service.
The company’s primary goal is to create a sustainable model of innovative, simple, and affordable digital solutions with a global outlook and local outreach.
Ideoholic – The Vision
Musaib and Reehan observed that omnipresent technology is making impacts across various sectors and giving an edge to the organizations that adopt it. However, some small organizations cannot afford these costly solutions and hence risk missing out on this bandwagon even though they have more impact on society.
The company’s vision is to break this cycle and put socially relevant organizations on a technological pedestal to see beyond and create ripples yonder.
