What is Peppty?
Social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram have become an everyday matter to all of us. Ever since Facebook was launched in 2004, social networking has gained more popularity and followers. However, we cannot deny the fact that it has altered our healthy social life. What if there was a social network that gives priority to safety and real social interaction? If that sounds like a good idea, then Peppty is what you are looking for!
Peppty is a startup that develops social networks that give importance to privacy and anonymity. It focuses on people’s individuality as well as social needs and therefore brings their applications closer to reality.
Check out the company page for Peppty on KillerLaunch.com.
The founder and his stimulus
Peppty Technologies Pvt Ltd was founded by Akhilesh Nandagiri, who is a B.Tech graduate from Karimnagar. He completed his education in Geethanjali college of Engineering from JNTU and has recently Graduated from Y-COMBINATOR startup school (march 2020) which is America’s biggest incubator. Akhilesh was a student when Facebook came into the Indian market. After he started using it, he realized there were a lot of privacy issues and felt a real disturbance in social life. Akhilesh believes that it destroyed the previous social life he had as a kid.
Many social networks sprouted up after the success of Facebook, each breaching people’s social life more than the previous one and in a new aspect. When Akhilesh was a second-year student of Btech, he left all these platforms and refused to use Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp even during a time when it was considered essential. Akhilesh was experienced in data analysis, and in his final year, he did a small private project on Facebook data tracking. He figured out that Facebook can trace our data and sell it online within seconds. Akhilesh was now determined to come up with something private and more protected.
After his schooling, Akhilesh learned computer languages, and within the four years of his engineering degree, he built and patented a social network that closely resembled our real social behavior. He was funded by an investor who was appreciative of the idea and took an interest in it. Peppty worked on five projects, a private social network, a business app for retail shops, a standalone status/stories app, an app for corporate elections, and the popular Stranger chat app with 1Million messages sent every week.
Early challenges
Akhilesh Nandagiri admits that they have faced a lot of challenges, and some of them were so huge that they had to pivot and start a whole new business model. The first challenge came when they released the social network model. It took five years for the idea to be embodied into a product, and by that time, the demand for social networks had collapsed. Since it became challenging to enter the market, they decided to make more private social networks based on the needs of the consumers.
“This was the first among maybe 50+ challenges so far. Even the tiniest issues cause great damage to the business, like the policy issues of google play store dropped our app from trending #2 to not even appearing in search.”
says Akhilesh. Peppty fixed these issues by finding new strategies and frequently relaunching their apps.
The success of Stranger chat app
The Stranger chat app, ChatHub is currently the main project of Peppty technologies. It has more than 400,000 accounts and 1 million messages sent every week. This stranger chat app allows you to discover the person you are chatting with, therefore making it more like a real-life interaction. AI and Machine learning have been employed to keep the app safe and clear. Peppty earns a profit by selling ads through the app, and there are various In-app purchases to buy filters and data regarding the strangers.
The app collects public data which helps the user to find out details about the person they are talking to. If a chat partner is chatting with you or someone else, you can see a text saying “this person is chatting with someone else, “. You can also visit anyone’s profile and find out whether they are real, fake, or a scammer based on the reviews of other users. You can find details like the number of people who blocked or reported them and whether they text with male or female users. The language filter has also become very well-liked since it helps you find people of your language.
Milestones and future visions
According to Akhilesh, the first milestone was when their chat application reached 100,000 downloads, and now it has become four times as much. Their vision is to make the world a free space to find and maintain relations. Social interaction is the basic need of humans, and it should not be so hard to fulfill. Peppty is working on plans with new technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence in developing their app. The business vision of the company is to deploy the current feature list onto the platform and get rid of bugs. They also wish to market the app further and boost a lot of beautiful relationships. Peppty aims to become a one-stop destination to find a relation, a fling, or just a fun chat.
