Inside Kutumb: Building a Discord-like app for Bharat
Engaged groups have always been vital to people, especially now. From creating a test group to test your new products and services to holding talks on various personal matters, which you might not disclose to everyone, engaged groups have always been significant.
In accordance with this, the San Francisco-based Discord and Reddit have made it possible for users to debate subjects outside of their immediate social circle on their own sites. Its disadvantage in India is that it solely serves the small English-speaking population.
About 400 million people in India use WhatsApp, making it a crucial medium for communication. The majority of Indian businesses test their ideas by launching them first on WhatsApp groups, which is owned by Meta. However, WhatsApp has certain restrictions, though, and is better suited for creating friends and family groups.
This enormous possibility was seen by Abhishek Kejriwal, a former product manager at Pratilipi, a self-publishing website for writers who write in regional languages. He learned that no social media site allows users to create large groups.
"We spoke to a lot of people in non-metro cities, and one in every five people wanted a community app," he said in an interview with YourStory. Although a few chat programs let you establish groups, these groups can only have a certain number of members and are not intended to manage bigger ones.
Together with his former Pratilipi coworkers, Vipul Allahwadhi, Naveen Dewangan, and Mohit Sharma, Abhishek founded Kutumb to address this issue and serve the nation's non-English-speaking smartphone customers.
The community building software from Bengaluru, which came out in May 2020, lets people start groups with more than 200 members.
Kutumb: Why?
Deloitte predicts that by 2026, India will have one billion smartphone users. A total of nearly 400 million units will be sold in 2026, with a CAGR of 6% for rural demand and 2.5% for the urban market.
Also, lockdowns led by COVID-19 and more people using smartphones have helped spread the internet faster across the country.
Kutumb, which means "family" in Hindi, is managed by its parent company, Primetrace Technology Pvt. Ltd. It functions similarly to Reddit or Discord.
In contrast to WhatsApp, which gives group administrators more authority while giving other users none at all, Kutumb offers customizable group hierarchy features, such as the ability to choose a team lead and sub-lead.
With this structure, an admin may make money by charging subscription fees, which can range from Rs 100 to Rs 5,000, and can distribute crucial messages to their sub-group instead of making a public statement.
