Skip to main content

The MakeSense Story-Gets Acquihired by Naukri

By C Chaitanya

Almost two years back, when we had launched the KooKoo platform, we were evangelizing the platform waiting for some innovative company to come along and build cool telephony apps. The real power of a platform is realized only through awesome developers.

 It was at this time that we got a mail Vivek Arya from Makesense to our support mail id(support@kookoo.in). He was asking some questions about whether KooKoo can do this and KooKoo can do that. So, to answer his questions, I got on a call and heard about his application. I just loved it the first time I heard about it. They had developed algorithms for semantic search using NLP and wanted to add a phone channel to automate the candidate screening process on an IVR. I said, go ahead and we will try to help you in whatever way we can. Incidentally, after the call with Vivek, I had remarked to my colleagues that very soon Makesense would be a prime candidate for acquisition by Naukri. Who knew that it would be so prophetic :) 

 Last month we got the wonderful news that Makesense was acquired by Naukri. I reached out to Vivek to get some comments from him about his journey. I am posting his answers below. It has been a real pleasure working with the Makesense team and I hope they go on to build more innovative stuff.
1. Can you explain a little bit about your semantic search technology and how it can be useful?

This is explained in a summary form on our webpage: http://makesense.in/technologies

2. What was your team size?

Our business went through various pivots so the team saw changes as well. On an average we were a team of around 5 - 6 people.

3. How long did it take for you to build this?

We spent the first year doing hands-on placement consulting to get a deep understanding of the current process and technology. This was the time when we started conceptualizing our product. Subsequently it took us around 3 years to build the entire tech though we kept releasing it in parts to test the impact. This we did via our placement services business where we deployed the technology as well as via clients who we signed on for our alpha and beta.
4. What specifically interested Naukri?

The quality of our semantic search platform and the ability it provided to be able to increase the efficiency as well as user experience for recruiters and job seekers is what interested them most.
 5. Any advice to people starting up

Every startup has its own journey and set of learnings. These are obviously not applicable for everyone. In our case if we look back and reflect, the ones that come to mind are:

Know the problem you are solving thoroughly, if possible experience it firsthand.
Question every assumption in your business plan, it's very easy to get carried away by your ideas and ignore the ugly parts.

If it's clear that a particular path is not working, pivot quickly, don't stay stuck.
Keep your team as small as possible.
Have at least one hacker-founder (This only applies to tech companies of-course).

 6. How are you going to spend your money :)

Mostly on investments. A little on parties. And some on trips with friends & family :)
7. How did you like to work with KooKoo?

We found the KooKoo team to be really supportive of startups. We can recall the number of times you provided us great prices when we were in tight financial situations. In terms of the technology as well as tech-support I'd say you guys rank out there with the best :) We don't recall it taking more than a few hours to resolve issues or even setup custom features. Plus the fact that you guys were always accessible over call was a great advantage as well.

Comment: Yes, I remember the requests :) We had to do a couple of night outs to make sure the deadlines were met.
8. Would you recommend KooKoo to other developers

Absolutely. For us, integration with KooKoo was a breeze. The documentation was nice and the entire API structure very intuitive. I code in python and combined with the KooKoo wrappers, we could churn out major features in a matter of hours.
9. What next.

Right now the focus is on integrating our technology across all parts of Naukri.com. We had a vision of how we could change recruitment and with the availability of the resources of Naukri, that vision is close to realization.

Popular posts from this blog

Cloud Telephony-History and state of the art

By C Chaitanya
Well, its been 11 years since Twilio launched their voice API in November 2008. I would say that was a major turning point in the cloud telephony industry. Before that, for people to build telephony applications, you either had to depend on proprietary platforms like Avaya dialog designer or build on arcane technologies like VXML which again was supported at varying degrees by the incumbents. Enter Twilio with their voice API and the industry changed for the better. Since it's been almost 11 years now I thought now might be a good time to do a comprehensive review of the cloud telephony industry as a whole in general and in India in particular. The Beginning Twilio was undoubtedly the startup which ushered in the era of cloud telephony. They started in November 2008. At that time in India, we at Ozonetel had launched a hosted VXML platform. There were no takers. After all who coded in VXML :) So when Twilio launched and we saw them take off, we immediately realized tha...
Read more

Google business messages and chat agents-A match made in heaven

By C Chaitanya
Google has launched Google business messages without much fanfare. It's just a small button that pops up when someone searches for your business on Google. But from the conversation industry perspective this is HUGE .   Do you know that the small call button drives millions of calls i n a year for pizza joints and other retailers in the US. Businesses spend more than a trillion dollars supporting billions of customer service calls each year. Now imagine how many chat conversations the "Message" button can drive.  Think of how customers interact with business. 1. Search on Google. 2. Click on web site link. 3. Web site shows chat pop up and tries to force the user to chat.(Annoying. I know :)) 4. User clicks on chat and starts conversing with a bot or an agent. This flow can now be completely changed. The new flow can be: 1. Search on Google. 2. User clicks on Message and starts conversing with a bot or an agent. What if you could design a customer experience that helps...
Read more

Telugu ASR speech data collection

By C Chaitanya
Image Source: IIIT-H Developing an indigenous ASR for Indian languages has been a goal for us since a long time. In that regard we have been experimenting a lot, trying out various neural network architectures.  While doing these experiments we found that there was no good dataset for Indian languages. While discussing with IIIT professors we got to know that the government of India was also exploring options to generate a good dataset. We immediately offered our help and our platform for this endeavor. So, as a starting step we have come up with a few campaigns to encourage users to donate speech data. We wanted to make it fun, so our first few campaigns are along the lines of JAMs(Just a Minute speech topics) etc. A topic will be provided and you need to speak for a minute on that topic. We have started this campaign for college students to start with. Of course anyone can participate and contribute their data. The more the merrier :) We will adding a lot more innovative ways ut...
Read more