Tech Shout!

A few days ago, the Reliance ADA Group launched BigAdda.com, an India-centric social networking site. Post the launch event, we immediately got in touch with the company for an exclusive tête à tête with the heads of the Reliance ADA Group and the chief brains behind the initiative. And voila, within few days, we were sitting in the BigAdda.com office right opposite Siddhartha Roy - the Chief Operating Officer, BigAdda and Nikhil Soman - the Chief Technology Officer, BigAdda. In the past Roy and Soman have worked together on quite a few projects under the Reliance banner and the latest venture BigAdda.com is surely more or less their baby.

To know what we spoke, read on:

T.S.: Can you tell us something about yourselves and your respective backgrounds.

N.S.: I passed out from Pune University in 1996 with a Master’s Degree in Computer Science. Since then I have worked with the Times of India group across various tech and business functions. After which, I headed the business development functions for Geodesic for about 3 years, prior to joining the Reliance Group around 2 years back. Here I have worked on a number of digital ventures.

S.R.: I have done my schooling in the boarding school from Sherwood, in Nainital. College education was completed from Hyderabad. Post my college; I joined Dun and Bradstreet, the risk assessment company. I ventured into the internet space with Hungama.com in 1999, in their Delhi office. After which I worked with Star TV and MTV, before joining Reliance. I have been with Reliance for about a year and eight months.

T.S.: How did BigAdda come up? What prompted you to get into the already crowded field of social networking?

N.S.:The BigAdda.com idea was born about a year back. Siddhartha and I started working on it since about Sept-Oct 2006; we built our team in around March-April 2007 and executed the project by May this year.

S.R.: More than social networking, we would term it as ‘youth’ networking. Today’s youth spends a lot of time on the digital spaces, i.e. on the web and mobile. Thus, we wanted to create a platform for the Indian youth of today. From that stemmed the thought of having a platform for self expression and media sharing, which was metamorphed together. And that’s how BigAdda.com was born!

Here there is self expression in the form of scribbles, forums, blog, communities that are appropriately dubbed as ‘addas’, along with media sharing in the form of photos, videos and music. All these put together form the core product verticals of BigAdda.

There was somewhere the necessity to have a clear Indian identity for the ongoing social networking fever, and that was one of the reasons we came up with BigAdda, wherein the platform can be customized to a very Indian environment.

N.S.: When we started toying on the BigAdda concept last year, we analyzed as to what are the properties online that the present day consumers, particularly the youth consume today. We studied the content, services, applications that the existing youth is using and which has more or less become their lifestyle. The younger audience today is in a complete digital lifestyle, from meeting friends online to possibly everything, and that’s exactly what happens here. Form chatting to sharing photos, it’s all here.

T.S.: How did you’ll come about with the BigAdda name and dual palm icon concept?

S.R.:With regards to the name, Nikhil and I jointly came up with it. We had various names and ‘BigAdda’ was the most appropriate. ‘Adda’ is a word that is synonymous as a hangout across India. And out though was that it was too big an expression of a hangout to not to be used. We felt it was absolutely apt to what we were trying to create, which was a youth networking hangout. And in that sense it was bang on and had great connect with us.

With regards to the hand, the very fist time when the BigAdda domain got active, we put up the logos and voting for the best one was done. There were about 8 logos and the users had to choose their favorite. The logo is created through a mash-up of two of the most voted logos. That’s how the logo got formed.

N.S.: There are various representations of the ‘adda’ word. It’s a hangout place, from your corner tea stall to your canteen in college; they are all your regular addas. We tried representations of the corner of a room, or maybe a street corner as one of our logos. There was yet another one which had a smile, representing the way you feel when you come to BigAdda. There was a joining hands logo, signifying that there is more than one person here and each of the fingers represents different attributes of our lifestyles. It’s about color, variety and basically expressing that I can actually paint my fingers in different colors and do different things. This logo was the one that expressed the entire thing. However it cam with a different creative and the smile wasn’t there. So initially we were toying with the idea, as the smile and the hands were the top two most voted logos.

S.R.: Thus it was all consumer chosen and consumer created. That’s how we got creating BigAdda.

T.S.: For a fact, most internet users are glued on to Orkut, Facebook and the likes. How do you plan to grab their attention towards BigAdda?

S.R.: Somewhere it is like having an email ID, where one person has multiple email IDs. We believe that what we offer on BigAdda is a product that has Indian sensibilities to it. We believe that Indians as consumers would like to consume content that is more or less their own regional and India-centric content. The ecosystem and the content play a very big role behind a particular site and that’s what we focus on, apart from its features of course. For instance, our video feature already has close to about 12,500 videos uploaded that have a lot of Indian flavor to themselves. In addition, there is a huge amount of regional and Bollywood content on the site. Another example to the Indian sensibility effect that I’d like to give here is that close to 15th August, which this year marked the 60th year of Indian Independence, a user had formed an adda on BigAdda, where a video had been uploaded for Bharat Bala, which is the Indian Independence video. Now there have been as many as about 21,000 views of the video with about 110 odd comments for the same. Thus bringing the long story short, through this instance I’d want to say is that there is a reason to talk, comment, bee active and thus there’s a proactive discussion taking place.

We technically launched on August 6th, and within about 15-20 days itself, we are experiencing a lot of traction in these product verticals that the users are already consuming today on the site.

Moreover, international social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook etc were all created over time. They have got their gestations in those businesses and have been made for world audiences. Perhaps an image put up by someone from another country may not appropriately go well with the Indian sensibility. However, something like this would not take place on BigAdda, since we primarily focus on the Indian youth network.

N.S.: Siddhartha has practically touched on the right note. We understand the Indian sensibility well, since our team too is a set of Indians. We also understand what exactly is required for the Indian consumer with respect to the imagery, screening requirements, security. The lack of privacy on Orkut is well known. Thus people are moving towards Facebook and BigAdda. We are absorbing at the rate of 15,000-20,000 users a day. Security and privacy of our users are one of our chief concerns.

T.S.: Can you elaborate a little on the security measures on BigAdda?

N.S.: Certainly. Firstly, when we decided to do the video product, we had to take care to keep users safe from obscene and antinational content. Indian laws are different from global laws, thus we had to very carefully adhere to the quality and type of content that’s uploaded. One of the key breakthroughs that we have made over the past 8 months is the method of screening videos, faster than its playtime. For instance, in a 5-mins video, there perhaps may not be anything objectionable in the very first minute of the video. But maybe in the third minute there maybe something obscene or antinational or unlawful. Thus it is very important to screen the entire video extremely fast and reliable. Somewhere even big names like Youtube face the problem of screening. However we have aptly tackled with it. On BigAdda, uploads happen in a matter of 20 seconds, and the video is screened fully. It is very unlikely that on our site you would find something that should not have been there. There is a round-the-clock monitoring with important tools deployed.

Where we stand out is that BigAdda, there is local team which is aware of the Indian sensibility and thus can maintain a parameter of appropriate and inappropriate content. However this is certainly not possible on global platforms.

S.R.: BigAdda has provided a platform that is safe, secure and private. The scribbles or blogs posted on BigAdda.com have an option of being viewed only by friends, marked as ‘Friends Only’, or by everyone. The ones shared publicly are visible to everyone. These BigAdda features apply to videos and pictures uploaded by the users, too, with an additional option of ‘Private’, where no one else but the user can view it. Users also have control over their privacy and who they interact with. They can decide if they want to receive communication from strangers or not by activating scribble from Friends Only.

In BigAdda we have added checks and balances at every point. The consumer has the power to report abuse. When the abuse is reported, it immediately gets escalated and if that particular content is abusive, it gets pulled off immediately. There are also certain timeframes and warnings given to the consumer causing problem, and if he continues his activity, then the person is deactivated from the site right away. The entire tracking mechanism is also in place.

Above are the exclusive videos that include our discussion with the BigAdda.com team. Check it out!