It's 2016, and it's no secret that the world has become a place where no one can voice their opinions without being judged or trolled by people holding different point of views. Whether its politics, a social subject or any other topic; you just can't escape the wrath of the people having different ideologies than yours. This is the very reason that many of us prefer keeping quite or just distance ourselves from expressing ourselves altogether.

This is the very dilemma that Sameer Agarwal, co-founder, VOIZD, faced during the 2013 general elections and post elections phase, which prompted him to start working on a mobile app called Voice Without Fear. A part of parent company Voizd Inc., Voice Without Fear, is an anonymous mobile app which gives everyone and anyone a platform to freely express their opinions and thought in their own voice without the fear of getting judged, labeled or trolled.

The USP of the app is that the users get to share their views/opinions anonymously and in voice without the entire persistent real name trapping of other networks. A user can upload a 30-second anonymous (optional) audio clips to express their thoughts.

voizd-screen

The app, which is being touted as a network of real people expressing their real thoughts, makes sure that their users' identity remains fully protected, so that they can be 100% themselves without having to filter their opinions according to society rules. Users get a non-judgemental platform to divulge their deepest of secrets to an unknown audience, and respond to each others secret confessions or questions. The app, which was beta launched in Sep 2016, comes with content discovery based on trending topics, emotions, proximity, and relevant topics.

It was during the much-hyped 2013 general elections and post elections phase that Sameer realised that openly expressing his view points about the elections was inviting him death threats and troll attacks. At first, he thought it was a one off thing and would boil down in a few days. But, he soon realised that our country has become intolerant towards opinions and thoughts which are divergent from mainstream.

While this particular incident did motivate him to start working on the app on paper, what really pushed him to bring it from paper to reality was a conversation he had with a close acquaintance. During his conversation, he realised that almost all the traditional social spaces that are live today are owned by English speaking Audience and people who are not very comfortable with English or written form get hard end of the stick. This is why he decided to have Audio/ Voice based expression as the mainstay of the App, so that everyone gets to speak their mind. In addition to giving everyone an opportunity to speak, what voice also does is, it keeps the essence, emotion, tonality of the person's opinion/view fully intact, which leads to a deeper connect between the poster and the listener.

About the Founders



Sameer Agarwal, Founder, VOIZD, holds a MBA in Internal Business and Marketing, and has a 10 year experience in entrepreneurship. He was most awarded winner in Mobile Marketing in the earlier venture (2013-14). Some of his professional accomplishments include acquiring 20-million users for RockeTalk as it’s CMO, with a hyper-lean budget and achieving a $ 2million revenue as Ad Sales Revenue Head within 16 months. He also has coss function experience in Mobile Tech, Marketing and Sales

Pooja Daswani, Co-Founder, VOIZD, is a specialist in Campaign and Audience Management with a 6 year experience in Mobile Social Media and a 3 year experience in Design and User Experiences.

Journey till now...



The VOIZD beta app, which was only exposed to just 100 people in mid Sep this year, has now organically grown to over 2000 users. It is now doing over five thousand posts and over one lac public conversations, from topics ranging from Relationships, Gender issues, Fashion and Abuse. According to their trends, 70 % of their current users are women and are highly vocal.

VOIZD is currently bootstrapped by the founders, though the team is meticulously working towards growing the network further and is looking for funding.

One of the best things about Voice Without Fear app, is that it is completely sign up hassle free. This means, all one has to do is download the app and start expressing themselves and get the true taste of freedom of speech.
Advertisements

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post
Like this content? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get latest updates.