Ipad’s newest application, Pulse has been the brainchild of two Indian born graduate students of Stanford University’s Institute of Design-Akshay Kothari (23) and Ankit Gupta (22).This $3.99 application was developed due their own personal frustration while reading news on the restricted screen space of the moblie phones. This application provides for a better screen space and users can finger-swipe back and forth various articles. Apart from that, its features include sharing articles through popular networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. This application has earned more than $40,000 revenue in which Apple has 30% share. This budding pair of bright minds has created their own company called “Alphonso Labs” and is soon turning to potential investors for long term benefits.

“You absolutely do not have to give away something great for free,” said Michael Dearing, a former eBay executive who is a teacher of the Launch Pad class. “If you build something great, people will pay you for it.”

It’s great how small things turn big in a short span of time. If we rewind few months back we’ll see how a simple college project turned out to be a goldmine for these two young college graduates. Ankit Gupta and Akshay Kothari were super excited as they would be one of the first few people to lay their hands one of the sought after products of Apple-the iPad. But little did they know that two months later they would be famous; on New York Times, NBC’s Evening News and TechCrunch a powerful technology blog. After their purchase, they had developed software as a part of their college project that aggregates news from various sources. It became a huge success and they were living a dream. Sitting on a goldmine with most companies trying to figure out how to do so, their start has been enviable. While 30,000 iPad users have downloaded their app so far, there are two million users out there. There are soon launching this same application on the iPhone which has an estimated user list of 3 billion people worldwide making this application one of the most successful applications. They have won not only attention but also huge sums of money. A true success!

Kothari is from Ahmedabad, while Gupta is a genius from IIT Bombay. At Standford while studying they got accepted to a programme called “Launch Pad”. The idea of Launch Pad was simple: build a product and launch a company in three months. While they got iPad which was truly enriching for people in love with technology, they discovered that news consumption experience had left them frustrated. So they ventured out to make an application in order to solve their ongoing frustration; which led them to start their college product. So they went about building their product which was difficult at start as many advisors from the Silicon valley told them to “try something else”. But they were not going to be put off by criticisms. “Basically, I think once you set out to do something, you must put your whole heart into it,” Kothari says. It was a great experience. They started to solve this problem and build up a whole new application which would later on shake up the entire technological world. “On day 1, people were like, ‘this is awful’,” Kothari says. By day 5, testers were asking if the app came bundled with the iPad. “Then we knew we were on to something,” he says. It was hard work, they researched, they tried, they tested and they perfected it.

Then came the issue of marketing. “We feel it’s the key. Most engineers think if they build an awesome product it will sell itself. We knew that approach was not going to work in a crowded app marketplace,” Kothari says. They uploaded videos on YouTube attracting attention and finally TechCrunch a powerful Silicon valley Blog reviewed it which went on the top of the list and hasn’t moved ever since. “We have been incredibly fortunate to be in an environment that encourages entrepreneurs,” Kothari says. The lessons they learnt not only taught them to become a tech designer but also taught them entrepreneurship.

“So many of our really smart friends in India opt for some stupid job in a bank after they graduate because of the comfort of a salary. Both of us passionately believe that young people should set out to do something on their own, and if our little success inspires anybody out there, that will be our biggest reward,” Kothari says, with heartfelt sincerity that didn’t seem to care if he was sounding a bit clichéd. Cliched or not we thoroughly like this duo. Small business ideas can be really rewarding if you believe in it, so keep your mind open to everything; you never know what’s next. Here is a toast to the success of these two talented Indian boys. Well, they have truly made us proud!

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