KORAMANGALA: A web design company called Appiness Interactive has garnered 35 international awards and over 50 nominations in just three years.
It is also the recipient of the silver medal at the Indian Digital Media Awards of 2013.
Set up in 2012 by Visakh Viswambharan and Sunil P Thomas, both experienced in digital media and marketing, Appiness is today one of the fastest growing start-ups in the city.
With a team of 58 and growing, the company has enabled several ventures, including India’s first outdoor camping music festival Storm, entertainment major Greenstone and several real estate projects.
“When Storm Festival came to us, it was still an idea — that of a camp-out music festival in Coorg. We created a web presence that showcased our vision of how the festival is going to be and that created a lot of buzz. CNN Go ranked it one of the top five music festivals in the country even before it happened, just based on the web presence,” says Visakh.
Armed with an MBA in advertising, Visakh has gained experience from working in sectors such as animation, digital media, product development and online and digital education.
Thomas, an investment banker-turned-marketing strategist, was earlier managing `1.4 billion in the financial markets. His last designation was Zonal Head, Marketing, at India’s largest B2B investment banking firm, NJ India. He holds an MBA in marketing and strategy.
The duo were soon joined by Shabeer Majeed and Rigin Velayudhan, who were recently designated as founding members.
Users today are spoilt for choice, says Visakh. “There is a lot of competition from across the globe and thousands of new websites get deployed every day.
So if you actually want to stand out and attract attention, an unconventional and innovative web presence is absolutely necessary,” he says.
Thomas says the company not just designs websites, but also provides solutions over the web. “It’s a pure bottom-up approach, with design coming out of endless discussions and brainstorming sessions. We strongly believe research is a part of the design process. We do immense research, even before we think of the look and feel of the website,” he explains.
For Visakh, the market is huge with no limits. “Globally user behavior has already moved to the web. India has one of the highest growth rates in web and mobile penetration,” he says.
He believes the days when a couple of people could create a website is over. “The technology is so advanced that creating a website is a long and complex process,” he says.
Appiness has launched initiatives on the web front like ‘BeFound,’ which focusses on web analytics, and ‘LoadFaster,’ which helps speed up a website. They are also planning on introducing a job portal -- ‘wowjobs’ and ‘YOMe,’ a mobile app for real-time ridesharing.
www.appinessworld.com