Managing director and Co-founder at CardByte, Mr. Navinn Kapur gives insights about the organization
What is the idea behind CardByte? What services does the app offer?
Currently, we are part of a new online world where intense networking makes up the base of the everyday functioning of any business or professional. I find it hard to process that paper business cards remain the prevalent method to network and exchange contact information even with the aggressive digital transformation that the industry has been witnessing.
I created and launched the CardByte platform in January 2022, aiming to make it easier for users to share, organize, and access all their business cards and professional contacts effortlessly while restricting the use of paper cards.
CardByte is India’s 1st end-to-end visiting card-based contact management and networking platform that aims to streamline business networking & pre-CRM processes by leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The app allows users to create digital visiting cards, exchange them within and outside their network, organize them using customizable tags, and store them on a secure cloud-based architecture. Additionally, the app’s smart scanner empowers users by automatically digitizing existing paper cards into e-cards & stores them on the in-app wallet, helping save up to 75% of time spent in manually storing them.
Share a brief on business expansion plans and future goals
We launched the C2C version of our platform for all in January 2022. The comprehensive set of features offered by the platform received an affirming response from the users and witnessed adoption across diverse industries and professions. Our team is currently working on the Enterprise Version of the platform that will offer a host of new features such as integration with CRM, collaboration tools & end-to-end integrations along with advanced analytics for businesses & teams. We also plan to expand our team size by 250% by the end of this year to support us in revolutionizing India’s digital contact management landscape.
How digital cards are playing a vital role in the evolution of businesses in India
The industry is still struggling with the efficient utilization of business cards for generating growth opportunities and business leads. In fact, businesses sometimes lose as much as 80% of their potential opportunities due to the unavailability of a digital, centralized contact database. Digital visiting cards have multiple advantages over paper cards:
Contact management platforms help users build and manage their network with validated & latest contact information of their peers.
- Excellent time & cost efficiency
An efficient contact management platform helps cut down annual spend on business cards by 80% and save up to 75% on time spent on redundant processes
- Improved shelf life of contacts
90% of paper business cards are thrown away within a week of exchange, but a contact management software ensures you never lose an important contact again.
- Real-time tracking of all changes in the network
A contact card with stale information is as good as no contact at all. A contact management software keeps the users notified of all the changes in their network in real-time.
What role does technology play in the business? What are the benefits of AI?
CardByte is a cloud-native platform built using microservices architecture. It leverages artificial intelligence to access the undiscovered network and unleash business opportunities. At CardByte, we have taken AI from the prototype to product stage by developing a state-of-the-art novel computer vision, and machine-learning-based novel combination of convolution neural networks, which can deliver desired performance on the limited resources of the smartphone. It employs smart and efficient edge computing techniques to balance the resources while performing complex computer vision tasks.
The architecture is built on the principles of sustainability, elasticity, resiliency, scalability, security and availability. It is accessible from any device with a mobile-first design and offers a mobile app supported on iOS, Android and the Web.
How did CardByte come up with the idea of introducing a subscription plan, and what is the idea and agenda behind it?
During my previous stints as an entrepreneur, I realized the challenges associated with managing and storing a large number of business cards on a regular basis. No matter who you are—a business trying to grow its sales or an individual trying to network effectively—the exchange of business cards is a given. But from forgetting to carry paper business cards to the problem of digitizing them, the entire process is offline and highly unorganized. It made me wonder how businesses and professionals can organize and keep track of their network without spending hours managing it. The answer is CardByte. It not only solves all your contact management problems but even ticks the boxes of being eco-friendly, digital-first, and secure.
We wanted CardByte to be accessible to all, especially the underserved business communities. Keeping this in mind, our platform works on a freemium revenue model. Even our paid subscriptions are priced such that the user saves up to 80% of their yearly spending on paper business cards and up to 75% of time spent on manually organizing them. Additionally, our basic plan shall continue to remain completely free and offer unlimited contact storage as well as AI-powered scans to all users.
How is CardByte contributing to the environment and to society?
Every year, 7.2 million trees are cut down to print 90-100 billion paper business cards. Additionally, paper business cards are mostly hard to recycle owing to the complexities involved. CardByte’s platform digitises these paper cards and helps bring down the individual carbon footprint of each user. CardByte not only saves trees from being cut, it also plants a new tree for every successful subscription on its platform.
CardByte also aims to sensitise people to the restrictive use of paper and make them aware of climate change concerns, so that they can contribute to saving the environment—because negative environmental impacts will have drastic consequences for affected communities.
(Brand Desk Content)
