Hudooku.com
An online market for the bright and curious:Hudooku.com pays students for sharing their knowledge
The question that gave rise to Hudooku.com was: “Is there a better way to breakdown the silos of knowledge that exist on the internet?” Hudooku means quest orsearch in Kannada and is a platform to connect people anywhere in the world sothat they can exchange insights and experiences quickly and efficiently on anytopic. It gives users access to forums from any website on the subject that heor she is looking for and is also available as a mobile app for android and iOS.
The startup, which is still at an early stage, started thanks to a problem that oneof the co-founders had to face. When one of his relatives was diagnosed withcancer; he tried to search the net about the topic but the search was quitefrustrating. “The reason was that knowledge from individuals is fragmented onthousands of forums and websites,” explains Ajay V, who is a co-founder.
The team, that consists of Ravi Kumar, Narayan Mani, and Ajay Venkatesan, is mainlytargeting the healthcare and education sector. “Millions of students possess agreat deal of untapped knowledge that can be unlocked if you provide them witha connection and communication platform. Students get paid to answerquestions and Hudooku plans to keep a percentage of the total revenue,”says Ajay.
Hudooku has partnered with institutes like IIIT-Bangalore,Health Care Global, Indian Red Cross and KEONICS. Moreover,they plan to expand to the US through a collaboration with the Californian company Course Hero whichenables students to create communities, as well as content like flashcards andnotes related to the subject they are searching for.
Unlike widgets like Disqus or the Facebook social-plug in, which allow creating forumson individual websites, Hudooku.com helps users interact and collaborate withother websites too. Ajay says that so far they are the only ones providing thisservice.
Ajay adds that they have two core differentiators:
Hudooku.com is the world’s first floating platform which allows opening a forum on any website in theworld by simply clicking a widget in the bookmarks bar.“The widget automatically reads the tags and metadata on the webpage andmatches it with conversations about the subject(s) from other websites,” heexplains. Through their algorithm ExpertRank, Hudook determines the level ofexpertise of a user. “We use a proprietary multiple variable analysis to‘bubble up’ the most qualified users in our community to answer yourquestions,” he says.
Ajay further explains, “We had 150 registered users when we launched this productand since then the number of registered users has gone up to around 15,500 withno extraordinary marketing effort. We now want to reach 100,000 users throughkey partnerships and brand building.”
The team explains that Hudooku.com is an interesting advertising platform forcompanies wanting to target specific groups of people interested in a particulartopic. However, they want to expand their revenue generation potential and areplanning to create a marketplace for tutors powered by their Expert Rankalgorithm.
So far, the team has raised two rounds of seed capital and signed over 30partnerships after incorporating the company in India and the US. However, theysay that the most gratifying achievement is that they have helped people whomay have never found each other connect with one another.”
Though confessing that the biggest risk they have take so far has been borrowing moneyfrom family and friends and their biggest challenge has been to maintain theirfamilies without a regular income, the Hudooku team is gung ho about thefuture. The question is no longer about the most hazardous things done so far,but about the bravest move to make next. They have the confidence that theywill succeed.
Source | http://yourstory.com
Thanks to Pralhad Jadhav, Khaitan& Co.
