A lot of people, when they become intellectuals, forget what humanity is. That is because it becomes difficult to have a balance of both. I believe that someone who walks into a brainiac chamber, leaving out his emotional quotient at the doorsteps, doesn’t even care about the circle of people around him. But Mr Suresh Kumar has never forgotten to gather up his EQ on his journey of becoming an erudite in application development. Readers, this article is going to be one of its kind, because Mr Suresh Kumar whom you are yet to meet in this read is in a class by himself. One fine evening, I, Karthi Easwaramoorthy, sat for an interaction to hear from him directly. We, DigitalVillage.In, put together an article based on it for your read. It a must Read! Very inspiring and courageous! Mr. Suresh Kumar is the founder, CEO of Pepul and Co-founder of MacAppStudio. In this interview, he opened up about his personal journey on how he and his childhood friend George came together to build a people centric million dollar company – MacAppStudio. He also shared how he and his team are building a unique privacy first social network called Pepul from India’s SaS bhoomi, Chennai as next ambitious project. Here you go. SOUL OF THE PARTY From the playground to the student clubs at college, Suresh had always made a mark of his presence. I couldn’t deny the fact when he quoted himself as a social butterfly, because despite the fact that the interview was virtual I felt the connection between us for real. I was very curious to know how he had that kind of connection with people. “ A lot of my friends at college were from Tamil Medium schools and that scared them about stages and speeches. I greatly felt that it was my responsibility to break that inferiority complex and I managed to do it”, said Suresh. Such good deeds were reasons enough for him to become the Secretary of the college in his fourth year. It was in the year 2003, when Suresh graduated as a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Mookambigai College of Engineering. As cool as a cucumber, our celeb got placed into an esteemed company and in the next 6 years he was receiving a payroll worth 2 lakhs per annum in India. As he was filling me in with these instances he did not forget to mention about his guide Mr. Balaji Kalyana Raman. INNOVATION’S PATH TO INTEL Suresh is a person who trusts innovation. “A problem becomes bigger and serious only when you cannot find a solution. If it is you who is arriving at the solution, when nobody else was able to, your value grows higher”, said Suresh because he abided with the saying “Knowledge is power”. No matter if it is art or science, if something that you are talking about takes your interest, you always glow differently. In our story, the glow is because of innovation. When I asked Suresh to define innovation he simply called innovation as any solution for a harder problem that reaches the common people easily to make their lives better. “As man moves from place to place,innovation becomes the solution for his problems. And it need not be very huge in appearance like rockets. It can even be as small as a water bottle. The bigger the impact it makes, the more you get celebrated”, went on Suresh. And who says no to celebration? Suresh approached George, his very dear friend, in the interest of starting a company on their own. With a problem statement they developed an application and on selling it to an Australian company, their confidence perked up. With coding genius George alongside, Suresh got into a competition held by Intel. That was a win worth $15,000. Competing with almost 18000 experienced developers, it couldn’t have been an easier job to win the competitions. This obviously needed recognition. And so did Intel award Suresh and George with the title, “World’s Best Developer”. These two gentlemen went on to become the youngest guys in Asia to receive Intel Blackbelt and for that they had a red carpet welcome at Sanfrancisco for a private dinner. It should have been an absolute shock for the people over there to know that Suresh and Geroge were working on these competitions all by themselves in part time. The ultimate purpose of knowing your own worth, is to not let somebody else treat you any less. And when you get that purpose done, you don’t stop there but want more. THE NEW VENTURE There is a lot of difference between what we watch at theatres and what happens for real. To reach a place so high, you have to work so hard with no excuses. Meanwhile you might have to face a lot of criticism. What matters is how focussed you are to hit the goal. “We decided to hit the goal”, started Suresh as we began talking about his MacappStudio. “The place where I’m sitting now is exactly the same place where I and George started 12 years back. We had to struggle through a whole heap of hurdles And there were times when I didn’t have enough money to even get medicines for my kid. I didn’t want to vent out to someone because I didn’t want to be judged. And our company, being bootstrap based, has sometimes touched zero. But eventually things fell into place. Having come this far, not even once did I regret my choice.” Suresh stated that he and George started this venture with a laptop that they bought on EMI and now they have built the office of their dreams with 150 people working for them. At the end of the day what matters is your passion and if you are truly following it. For Suresh and George, it was always passion before money. And that was how their company
A complete guide to know everything about Instagram marketing
Instagram is the most used app after Facebook. If people in Instagram would be considered as a country, then it would be the 4 th largest country in the world. Around 81.3% of people are in Instagram, they aren’t there only for their personal use, but also for the professional cause. You can do a lot of things in Instagram than, just posting videos and photos. Users in the Instagram aren’t just active, but also, they are engaged too. Research says that a man spends at least 8 minutes of their daily time in Instagram. We hope after reading the above content, you are sure that Instagram is not just for personal use anymore, it is used globally to promote various activity, showcase the talent, showcase products, and inspire the audience. It is a great tool to promote your product in a friendly manner, than hard selling to the customers. Instagram marketing is a kind of social media marketing in which marketers use the Instagram platform to promote their products. It involves a lot of strategies to promote your brand in a catchy way to attract customers to your platform. The content which you provide should be “THE BEST”. Confused about how to hack Instagram marketing? Scroll down and find the answers. Hope you enjoy reading! Change your profile into Business profile: As soon as you think about stepping into Instagram marketing, create your business profile into Instagram or switch your current profile into business profile. It is very easy to change your profile into business profile Settings-> switch to business profile. Benefits of using business profile: # Your followers can contact you directly with just clicking on the contact button, just like the website. # It is a great tool to publish your ads without using facebook’s advertising tools.’ # When you switch your profile into business profile, it benefits you to see insights for every posts you have posted. So, that you can take decision based on the insights available. It allows you to use Instagram free tools: Business profiles in Instagram is almost same as facebook’s business profiles. It provides you insights, which is segmented into impressions, engagement, and many more. You are also provided with the demographics of your followers which includes their age, gender, location, and most active hours. You can view insights on every post and see what kind of content posts is liked by your followers, and which content you should work on. These free tools help to understand your customers in a better way and interact with them through your content. Estimate your Instagram target audience: You should know your audience before you start Instagram marketing. For instance, if your business is about men’s fashion, then target men audiences according to the age, location, gender, income, interests. If you are confused about where to start then, we would suggest you to monitor popular events and interest hashtags related your business. You can also view your competitor’s profile for best insights. Instagram is an amazing tool to define your audience in a better way. Create sponsored ads: The best part of creating sponsored ads is, you can control exactly how much you want to spend on them. Sponsored ads have become a common sight in the Instagram platform. This allows the brand to target their audience in a unique way. While using sponsored ads, make sure to use content that is engaging and also appealing to the target audiences. You can also turn your existing posts into sponsored ads, for which you should be watching your posts keenly to get the utmost results. There are also different forms of sponsored ads which you can post like photo, video, stories, stories, stories canva, etc… Use Instagram stories to the maximum: Instagram stories are a great way to generate leads. It is different from Instagram posts, because it is in slide show format and disappears after 24 hours, but the stories can be saved. It gets saved under Instagram archive. Which you can reuse it whenever you want. It is similar to snapchat stories. It doesn’t appear in the news feed, instead it appears in the small area above it. The user can click on your photo at the top, and the user can view your story easily. You can use this feature to experiment with the content. You can even tag other accounts in the story, if you’re collaborating with other brand or influencer. Collaborate with influencers for a wider reach: The best and fastest way to reach your potential customers on Instagram is through influencers, who are already popular among audiences with large followers. Most People purchase products or services suggested by the influential people they follow, because of the trust built in them. If your business wants a wider reach, then the right industry influencer can do wonders to your brand. You can get your brand in front of those users through influencers. For that, you should identify the influencers which have audiences related to your products or services for a better reach. Post at the right time: Have a scheduled time to post, like post during peak days and hours, when your followers are online. Never try to over-post, this will surely backfire you and you’ll return to your existing followers soon. If they see only your brand in their news fees, then they will get irritated and unfollow you as soon as possible. This doesn’t mean that you should post very rarely. Post in a continuous basis to remain in their news feed. According to research, the worst days to post on Instagram are on Wednesdays and Sundays. While the best days to post is on Mondays and Thursdays. It is considered good to post between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., as well as 2 a.m. It is good to post between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. because, it is the time when people get ready to their work and check social media for the updates. 2 a.m. is