Divum Date:   Tuesday , August 03, 2010 DIVUM With the growing popularity of mobile applications telecom companies, software designers, and users have channelized all their efforts in the development of mobile applications. The Indian telecom sector had predicted the mobile phone user base in the country to touch the 500 million mark by this year. The challenge is to provide the users with variety of options in their cellphones as they have confined their personal and professional lives in their mobiles. In such a scenario, Divum could think of developing varied applications that would come handy for mobile users to perform any task right through their cells. This idea crept into their mind in a period when the world was scathed by the global economic downturn. Divum is an Indian startup, which is focused on mobile application development and has developed more than 120 apps last year, covering various platforms like iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, Android. It was established by Vaideeswaran Sethuraman, who is an EDA engineer with 15+ years of experience, and Sreelakshmi Vaideeswaran, who has a passion for graphic designing and business practices roles. At a time when mobile applications in India were hardly known and available only for a few platforms, Divum planned to make various mobile apps pervasive and compatible on variety of platforms. PRODUCT After involving into a deep thought process and several experiments, Vaideeswaran and Sreelakshmi combined their efforts and skills to set up Divum as a mobile apps company, which has been a self sustained startup. As their revenue started picking up, they have now reached a stage, where they have 35+ global clients, set-up a subsidiary in London, UK, Divum is Pro-Forum Nokia member, Alliance partner with Blackberry, Channel Partner with Samsung. The company has developed various games and applications under their banner like Fun City Games, Cricket Calling, FootBall Fever, F1 Twitter app and My pocket prediction etc. Divum also have couple of unique App Frameworks. FUTURE PLANS AND CHALLENGES After its establishment in October, 2008, the founders say that they are constantly growing. It started with two people and now the employee count is 15, excluding the marketing personnels. Their target customers are the experimentative mobile users and they plan to offer many other applications, which would benefit any mobile user. Apart from developing apps, they look forward to provide complete mobile solutions too. With their clients across the globe in UK, U.S., Australia and Malaysia, they are also working with Kingfisher, Infosys, Research-In-Motion, Nokia, Apple, TechBLA and Astrovision-Online on different engagements. Though they have been offered for fundings, the company is not in plans to accept, at present. As they deal with the business of providing end to end solutions to their users, their biggest challenge is to maintain their pace way ahead of the market. There are a lot of players who are emerging in the same field, so the tough task for Divum is to maintain its standard in the market while they still stay competent. UNIQUE FACTOR Being the early adapters, Divum has created various in-house frameworks which helps them build different applications quicker than the required time. Founders of Divum feel that, most of the apps developed by them are tailor-made for each platforms and the user interface (UI) are customized as per the need of the application. At Divum, every team member is passionate about the apps they build thus trying to give a unique improved mobile solution every time. REVENUE MODEL The company deals with both products and services. Being a start-up Divum is innovative in engaging with clients in various models. Their revenue comes from the clients who demand their service to develop various applications or by selling their own application in different app stores and through revenue share with their clients. They charge for their service at once, or in case of partnering the service, the revenue is shared between the service providers. DETAILS Offices: Bangalore Founded: October, 2008 Key persons: Vaideeswaran Sethuraman, Founder and CEO. He has 14 years of experience in semiconductor/software industry. He has designed and developed complex EDA tools and many Mobile applications in the past. Sreelakshmi Vaideeswaran, Co-Founder and Director. She is a creative thinker and passionate UI designer with about 5 years of experience in various Business Practices roles. Team Size: 15 excluding marketing personnels. Investors: self funded Competitors: Mobile segment being the next Boom, competitors are inevitable. Healthy competition is always good to have. Website: www.divum.in