You’re reading an eChai Interview, an insightful and candid conversation with Entrepreneurs — a publication of eChai Ventures.

Aap Ready ho for a Networking App?

Converza is a fun, simple and interesting network to discover and engage with people sharing common interests and passions. Available for all OS users, this app is trying to connect people who are comfortable in connecting to each other.

Ram Punjani, CoFounder of Converza talks to eChai about the idea behind it.

Q. How did you come up with the idea of Converza ?

The idea was sparked after a series of events, which highlighted the problem of how complex topic based online conversations were.

Conversations were happening all across different social networks, news portals and text messengers. This fragmentation made online conversations difficult to keep a track of and contained a lot of noise (Twitter).

Also, these social networks were completely focused around users’ friends, relatives and influencers who basically are the people they already knew and are in touch with on all platforms.

The big problem was how to discover and connect new and interesting people who share common interests and engage with them.

Hence, the idea incepted in form of an interest based social network called Converza which simplifies discovering and engaging with people who share interests and passions while also providing regular content from all over the world which fuels discussions, idea sharing and enables creation of a network which is based solely on a person’s interests.

Q. What problem are you solving?

Currently billions are actively using social networks, but existing social networks are focused on people you went to school with, or people you follow rather than the ones who share your interests and passions.

There exists a gap for a new type of social networking platform that lets people socialize around their interests. Converza has been created to fill this gap and connect people based on their interests and passions.

Q. How does it work?

Its pretty simple, users just have to download our app from the Google Playstore or App Store, register, fill in their interests and we do the rest!

Q. What is your target market?

Our target market is Millennials. As these are the people who are inseparable from their smartphones and who love meeting and interacting with new people.

Q. What is your competitive advantage?

Our competitive advantage is based on our brand positioning and a proprietary algorithm that matches and connects people who share common interests and passions.

Also, we have a micro-content delivery model that aggregates news and information from various sources and keeps the user updated about everything happening in their field of interest thus giving them enough discussion topics and fuel conversations.

Q. How much time did it take you from conceptualization of Converza to actually launching it in the market ?

We took around 8 months from conceptualization to a beta product (Converza Lite)

Q. Tell us more about your team?

Our team has a vibrant mix of raw passion and experience in form of Akash, who is an IIT Roorkee alumni and worked with a leading e-commerce platform, Vikas – a startup stalwart with 13+ years of experience in diversified sectors and Me (Ram) who handles all the business aspects of the venture. Along with the co-founders we have a dev and a content team who have come together to simplify online conversations.

Q. What do you want to achieve from this? What is your larger goal or vision?

Our vision is pretty simple, “we want to connect like-minded people worldwide”

Q. What sort of support and feedback are you looking from the community?

All we need is people to use our platforms and give us their review of what they liked and what they hated. We are looking to grow and refine our platform so more the people use it and give us the feedback about the product, better and faster we scale up.