Gattani (from left), Nir Bannerjee and Gulati are based in Mumbai
On Wednesday, IIT Bombay’s E-Cell launched a new social networking startup — LifeinLines — as part of its third Ideaz workshop. For the uninitiated, Ideaz is a Pan-IIT Business Idea Challenge. Lifeinlines calls itself a ‘lifestreaming’ startup and was founded last June by IIT Bombay alumni Ankur Gattani and Maninder Gulati. I spoke to Gattani a day after the launch and he says that LifeinLines offers a far more intimate interaction experience than a Facebook or Orkut. Incidentally, Rediff’s Ajit Balakrishnan is an informal advisor to the company and “We (Rediff and LifeinLines) are both interested in exploring a more formal relationship, but will wait for some time,” says Gattani. Remember the Vakow! deal? Anyway, LifeinLines is self-funded (seed money was Rs 1 lakh from Gattani’s mother) but is in the market to raise venture money.
I put together a panel of venture capitalists for an investors’ first take on LifeinLines and also on competitor Lifeblob. Their names are being kept confidential. However, you can read Norwest Venture Partners’ Niren Shah’s thoughts on ‘lifestreaming’ as a business model in the next post. But first, the panel’s review:
What Works:
- It is a great way for an individual/family to organize their memories and life events.
- Interesting monetization opportunities due to availability of context.
What Doesn’t Work:
- Anticipate limited virality. The fan-out would be low. Why am I interested in someone else’s lifeline? Seems like going through an old album. You would be the only one interested in yours right?
- Lifeinlines’ usage looks a lot like Twitter. And Lifeblob is very slow.
- This doesn’t seem to be the natural way people share information.
- Is this a feature or a product? Can see a Facebook application of this kind being interesting but can this challenge the core of social networking? Seems more like a good improvement on personal blogging…maybe that’s the space.
Ankur Gattani of LifeinLines writes in via email:
I wonder if, as an expert, you’d really think of comparing Lifeinlines with Lifeblob. Yes it’s the same space, but really far apart. The question about your timeline being interesting to me ‘might’ be valid for a ‘timeline’. We at LiL, however, don’t really see LiL as a timeline and, we’ve seen amazing amount of user interest in building conversations from the little moments shared by individuals – friends or strangers , or just keeping track.
We do love being in touch with what’s up in people’s life – isn’t that what the Facebook newsfeed or Orkut updates are all about, though at a rather superficial level? Don’t we announce ourselves to the world by the IM status messages and ppl pick up conversations from that?
And amusingly, this wasn’t really the point that came up in my investor interaction. The challenge is more to do with monetization, which as you rightly said, the richness of content/context should help us with. I’m happier when you compare with Twitter, since it’s the same need of being in somewhat closer touch than emails enable.
Do track some of the users’ lives on LiL, perhaps a lot of content that’s never going to be generated on any other platform.
Anyway, I’d rather let the audience give the answer. Sure would want to discuss this sometime, if you feel inclined, shall make my pitch and see your take!
As a part of our strategic partnerships, SpARCs group is looking to digest its small fund in life streaming services.
The point of concern is the sustainability of the idea behind it (Lifeinlines, A generic version of Twitter or recently funded lifeblob). Since, Execution is awesome, and some innovation if they can put, then only its success can be reasonably assured of.
CSR
Arun Dubey