JOIN USWWDC 2021: Bengaluru-based iOS app developers shine amid pandemic
India is in the midst of the second wave of the Covid-19 and has turned out to be more devasting than the previous one in 2020. Hospitals and primary healthcare centres have been overwhelmed with the increasing daily cases and shortage of oxygen cylinders and beds with ventilators. Several cities and rural regions are under strict lockdown to control the spread of Coronavirus infections.
Experts believe that there is a chance of a third wave and would primarily affect young adults and children. Taking cognizance of the report, the government has cancelled the Class 10 and 12 exams for the 2020-21 academic year.
Others such as graduate students, young adults, and parents with jobs are forced to study and work online, respectively. Besides work, they have to carry out personal chores and also entertain themselves to get some distraction from depressing news around.
Amidst the misery, some tech-savvy Indian app developers are doing a wonderful job of creating multi-utility and health-conscious apps to help people finish their job easily and also keep themselves happy and fit.
With World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2021 just a few days away (June 7-11), DH had the opportunity to interact with some brilliant iOS app developers in Bengaluru. They are not only developing solutions to problems faced in India, but also for the entire world.
Kagaaz Scanner
This app developed by Sorted Ai is founded by Snehanshu Gandhi (IIT Bombay, ISB Hyderabad), Tamanjit Bindra (AIT Pune) and Gaurav Shrishrimal (IIT Kanpur). Kaagaz is actually the second product from the genius trio.
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"Before this, we built a home services startup for 4 years. When we started working on the idea, we first created an AI-powered productivity app called Sorted AI (on Google Play Store). Soon we realized that there is a large chunk of Indian users (the Bharat users) who have come to the internet for the first time recently through their smartphones and are looking for a lot of basic tools to get digital instead of more advanced productivity apps like Sorted AI. Hence, we built Kaagaz Scanner," they said.
Ever since the ban of CamScanner over user privacy concerns in India, the Kagaaz app has become the go-to multi-utility office app in India. It can scan documents, convert images to PDF or improve the documents, and most importantly protect the user data. It needs no Sign-In, offers Ads-free Scanning, custom watermark, and completely free to use.
It should be noted that the Indian government's had a special mention of Kaagaz Scanner in the 2020 edition of AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge. It is one of the fastest-growing apps in the world. Currently, it has registered more than 49 lakh downloads and growing. Also, it has an envious 4.5 consumer rating.
"Kaagaz has evolved a lot since its launch as a Scanning App in June 2020. Today, Kaagaz is a Document Scanner, PDF Maker, PDF Viewer, PDF Editor, File Manager & Cloud Storage, all rolled into one. In the future, we are going to introduce more features for Document Editing & Document Creation," Team Kaagaz said.
"Apple team has helped us a lot in developing our app for the iOS. As Kaagaz Scanner was first rolled out on Android, when we decided to build it for iOS, we basically tried to replicate the Android App to iOS. Not being primarily iOS users ourselves, we didn’t understand a lot of basic UI, UX elements of building for iOS and made a lot of mistakes, including choosing incorrect iconography, menu options, and many other UX flows," Team Kaagaz added.
Oga - #1 Dancing App
This is an interactive dancing app and offers a lot of fun activities and challenges for all age groups.
Oga is touted to be the world’s first fully interactive dance app where users have access to a wide range of dance content from their homes. It makes full use of Apple's Core ML (Machine Learning) tech incorporated in Apple devices for real-time scoring.
The app is powered by Oga's proprietary motion comparison technology that compares user’s movements with the trainer’s in real-time, to provide feedback on how well they performed. Added elements such as live scores, leaderboards, global challenges, and many more exciting features further drive up the experience.
Oga users can challenge their friends and family on the app. Also, they can share the dance moves on popular social platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and others.
Users just have to select a routine and get movin'. There's a lot to choose including Latin music, Hip-Hop, K-pop or dance fitness and many more.
Users can also choose the dancing difficulty. Start from low and climb up to high once you're ready to dance with dancing professionals.
Oga is spearheaded by 27-year old Ashish Rawat. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Games Development from the University of South Wales.
"After the launch of Oga which provided a wide range of content - yoga, strength workouts, and dance fitness, most users leaned towards dance fitness as a medium to stay fit. That’s when he realised that there were not many solutions dedicated solely to dance as a medium of fitness and fun. Oga democratises the way one looks at dance and lets users decide their motive. Whether one is looking to learn dance, have fun sessions or simply dance to stay fit, Oga is the perfect place for all," the company said.
Oga was launched in the US early this year and has already gained lot of traction. It has registered super high engagement with over 4 dances per active user. Oga is planning to raise a new funding round to aggressively scale up and reach 100,000 monthly active users.
On asked what new feature we can expect in near future. The company said it is planning to bring a special feature for creators to share videos of their dance moves to their followers and create interactive challenges to participate in.
"Users will also be able to battle against each other by following along and getting scored in real-time. This is one of the very few apps that allows users to create a dance based on full track length. This will be a social experience that will democratise the entire creation process, allowing dance creators to engage with their audience better," the company added.
Oga also attributed their success to fruitful interaction with Apple experts.
"The Apple team has been extremely helpful in terms of design walkthroughs and explaining the different ways we can incorporate newly launched features into our application. They are the ecosystem experts. They dive deep into every specific feature and it is good to understand from them as to how we can better our offerings by using Apple tools," Team Oga noted.
YogiFi: Smart Yoga Trainer
As the name suggests, it's a Yoga training app. It promises to offer interactive and immersive yoga sessions straight to an individual’s home using computer vision and augmented/virtual reality technologies of native iOS devices and software.
The app transforms itself into a personal yoga trainer providing guidance based on real-time posture analysis and tracking individual’s daily progress, as a companion app to YogiFi Smart Mat, a connected fitness product from the same company.
YogiFi app developed by Wellnesys Technologies Private Limited is founded by Muralidhar Somisetty. He created the Yoga app and added features based on his personal experience in dealing with a passive lifestyle.
Somisetty made a miraculous recovery from chronic lifestyle diseases through the regular practice of yoga and meditation over the years. Being a techie turned yogi, he wanted to promote this ancient science using modern technologies (IoT, AI, AR/VR) and his idea has been to make yoga accessible to every individual across socio-geo-demographic boundaries and create a differentiated learning path for holistic wellbeing.
Somisetty is also an avid photographer and a certified yoga teacher with a special research interest in the reversal of lifestyle disease and the slow aging process through yoga and meditation techniques.
It's been only a year since YogiFi made its debut on Apple App Store. It has witnessed 400 per cent growth with users from 34 countries during the pandemic times.
It is one of the best smart and interactive apps for people to keep themselves healthy and build stronger immunity while staying at home.
An interesting aspect of the YogiFi app is that takes users virtually to exotic landscapes such as Himalayas, Forest, Beach etc. while practicing a few yoga postures and simultaneously receiving real-time feedback through computer vision.
"Now, the YogiFi is planning to launch a Virtual Studio concept where two users can come together into a virtual room to practice yoga together. Users could choose to participate in a fun yoga day challenge against a friend or someone from the YogiFi’s community leader board. YogiFi is also planning to extend in future to enable 1:1 personal sessions with certified yoga trainers on their platform," Team YogiFi said.
"YogiFi received amazing support and encouragement from Apple’s WWDR team in India and access to evangelists across multiple regions. Apple helped us in smooth migration from a cross-platform to a native iOS app, organized 1:1 consulting workshops to review and provide us the direction on UI/UX, hands-on sessions for quick adoption of their cutting-edge frameworks such as Vision and App Clips," the company added.
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