Chennai: The great A P J Abdul Kalam asked youngsters to dream. “You have to dream before your dreams can come true,” said the 11th Indian president who was a beacon of hope to many in the country.
For Rajasekar Sundaresan, he was more than that: for the aerospace scientist helped him get into college. Now, six years after he completed his studies, Rajasekar has lived up to his dreams – he is the founder and CEO of Pixalive, a social media app that he believes will give Facebook a run for its money in time.
The Krishangiri-born youngster, who hails from a farming background, told News Today, “I did not have the resources to get into higher studies after completing school. So, I started working in a small firm in Hosur.”
BIG HELP
But things changed when he met former president A P J Abdul Kalam. “I submitted my certificates to him and he assured help,” said Rajasekar.
And help he did: Rajasekar received the money he needed for his studies from the former president and went on to pursue engineering in Dharmapuri.
After completing his studies, Rajasekar worked at a leading software firm where he held various positions in his four-year term there.
‘EUREKA’ MOMENT!
It is when the Snapchat controversy happened that he decided to come up with an Indian-made social media application.
“I had just quit my job due to personal reasons. When the Snapchat controversy erupted, I realised that there were no made-in-India social media platforms. There were messengers and other platforms, but nothing had all the bases covered. So, I decided to come up with one,” said the youngster.
But creating such platforms, although comparatively less cash intensive, still needed money and that led Rajasekar to approach banks, the Centre through the ‘Startup India’ scheme, but nothing came out of it.
“I told my father that if I go through with the project, things would turn for good. The next day, my father got me the cash – he had sold his property,” he said.
Rajasekar started working on his project. He single-handedly created the wireframe and all the necessary codings that are needed to create a social media platform in six months’ time. He named it Pixalive.
APP FOR ALL
When asked what is new with Pixalive, he said it is a complete platform that has all features that millennials of today look for in an app. “In Pixalive, your post will be alive only for seven days. The social networking app also has voice note feature that can run for 20 seconds, apart from giving users the option to post their photos, videos and text.”
He claims Pixalive is created for Indian languages as well as international ones and that is where he feels the voice note feature comes into play. “There will be less text and more voice content,” he said.
As of now, Pixalive is for use in Android devices only and soon, it will be available in iOS and other platforms, he said, and added, “My team is also working on features like messaging that use voice to text conversion, dubsmash, live streaming, posts and other different features. The testing phase is on and soon, you can expect them to be rolled out.”
How long will it take? Rajasekar says, if he finds the right investor, it might take only three months.
IN FUTURE
By 2020, Rajasekar wants to bring out more applications and use Pixalive as a platform to promote them. He said because more than half of India’s population use cellphones, the future is bright for social media platforms.
“My only gripe is that during the initial stages of a startup, people do not support young entrepreneurs. If investors and the government help innovators during the initial stages, more unicorns will come up in India,” was the sagely advice of the youngster.
DATA SECURITY
Rajasekar was asked about data security that has been the talk of the town lately. He said, “I will be soon moving my app to its base in our country, which would be Mumbai. All data from Indian users with major foreign apps go to a different regions than ours. With Pixalive, our data will be in our country.”
His stand on India’s data protection laws and EU’s GDPR is very clear as well. He said, “Both laws are good in their own way. But, us being Indians, it would be preferable to keep our data within our country.”
IT’S LIVE
Pixalive was launched August and until December it has garnered 10,000 downloads. Rajasekar says people from more than 64 countries use the app and is expecting to conclude the current calendar year with 25,000 downloads. He also believes that by 2022, Pixalive will grow substantially to give Facebook a tough time in the social media world.
Rajasekar can be contacted at 87785 84566.