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Bringing laurels to the Institute, a startup—‘Heartonnect’ established by IIM Indore’s alumni Akshay Mehta (PGP 2014-16) has been selected by Facebook for its FBStart Programme. Heartonnect is a mobile based socializing platform launched on the Android’s Play Store approximately three months before. Heartonnect is a buddy finder or a date finder application that connects its users anonymously on a real-time basis via VOIP calling technology. After the initial anonymous interaction, the users have the option to reveal their identity. The startup would be receiving $40,000 worth of credits and services from Facebook.
Discussing about the idea of anonymity in the platform, Akshay, currently the CEO at Heartonnect said, ‘The idea of anonymity was inspired by experiences of our friends on various dating applications (apps). We noticed that as the society is going digital, so is the art of connecting to people. Additionally, we also observed that all the dating apps function on the idea of appearances/looks of the users i.e. via their profile picture. This eventually led to failure in finding an ideal match in most of the cases. Thus, we determined to move the focus of dating apps from appearance to the art of conversation.’
Heartonnect will get an opportunity to connect directly with the Facebook team and will be enrolled into the social media giant’s exclusive community of global startups that include Adobe, Coursera, Dropbox, and Salesforce.
IIM Indore congratulates Akshay and his team for this achievement.