Have you ever thought that you would connect to the people sharing same hobbies as you over a click of button? That’s exactly what Prasanna Jagannathan, Sampath Jagannathan and Murali Satagopan, more family than friends, have done. In early 2015, a Silicon Valley veteran, a product management specialist and a stand-up comedian came together and formed Brigge — striving to use technology to help like-minded people connect.
Brigge is a platform aimed at building, growing and engaging communities through common interest activities and experiences — whether it is an interest- based public community in a city, an employee community at an enterprise, a student community at a university or a loyalty community of a local food and beverage business. Brigge strives to drive engagement through online as well as offline interactions.
“We realised that there was no existing platform to help connect like-minded people through common-interest activities and form homogeneous communities. This idea primarily started off as an open community platform where like-minded people can form groups and do activities together. Once we saw sizeable traction in that segment, we decided to allow commercial entities to use the platform to build their own community,” says Prasanna Jagannathan, Co-founder, Brigge.
Being a fairly small firm, it added its tenth employee last month. “The bulk of our team works on product development and the rest is split between marketing and sales,” says Jagannathan. “There are several alternatives available for people to form groups and interact online including Facebook and WhatsApp. However, Brigge is built to drive interactions both online and offline. Brigge is also location-based, interest-based and is tailor-made for activity-based community interactions,” adds Jagannathan.
Funded by The Chennai Angels in what they call an idea stage investment. “Having released and validated the product on all major platforms, we are now actively raising our next round of funding to invest in growth and revenue generation,” says Jagannathan, hinting on further investment rounds. Having a multi-city presence already, the company is also planning to introduce revenue streams shortly.
“Our immediate goal is to on-board commercial establishments and help them build/engage their communities through the platform - segment by segment, while providing a delightful platform for end users to discover, enjoy and share community leisure experiences,” says Jagannathan.