Startup Story # 8: Track your every movement in an Instant

September 26, 2016

Imagine an app that tracks every movement and quantifies the steps taken to study your daily habits. With technology coming up with ways to simplify each and every task, there is one app that can set you on living a better lifestyle simply by analysing your every move and providing it to you at a click of a button. Emberify is a technology startup building Instant, a leading Quantified Self and Lifelogging Platform. The features provided by Instant include quantifying the time spent walking, running, at home or at office and on how long you spend on your mobile phones. It even keeps a tab on your sleeping pattern.

Emberify, which was started in 2014 is Shashwat Pradhan’s brainchild. An idea that struck him while he was still a student at College of Engineering Pune (COEP). The initial product established by Pradhan and a partner was developed to control phone addiction which advanced into its present model. “I had always been interested in data science. My first app got featured on the Blackberry App store as well. What started off in college with two people has now become a team of six,” says Pradhan.

“I’ve always wanted to manage my time better.” This prompted Pradhan to move into his second phase with Android Programming. The app which is now available on Android and iOS offers a single destination to track your phone usage, app usage and habitual activities like walking and sleeping. With similar apps in the market, Pradhan’s app goes a step ahead with analytical services integrated like the Coach. It allows you to ask questions regarding your daily patterns which will be answered by Coach through graphs and storytelling format. “Our app is automatic; you don’t need to set up other additional apps for the same purpose. We want to add value to the consumer’s data, who won’t be able to interpret it themselves,” explains the founder of Emberify.

Their mission is to provide the world with personal analytics so that people can change the way they perceive themselves and improve their lives based on this data. One of its striking features is its integration with Google Fit, Google’s health-tracking platform for developers that allows Instant to pull in data from numerous connected fitness-tracking apps. Pradhan intends on continuously working on the app and integrate more services such as Fitbit support and tracking activities such as cycling. “I make sure I personally meet some of my app users. Their feedback is of utmost importance and we focus our future goals based on it,” states Pradhan.

The app, which has garnered almost half a million downloads and won awards such as the Google Fit Challenge Grand Prize, BlackBerry’s Best of 2015 and has featured on Apple’s ‘Best New Apps’, was not so successful at its nascent stage. The young entrepreneur elaborates, “Initially we didn’t get much traction. We even had second thoughts about what we were doing and were extremely nervous. But, I guess when you set up any startup you need to be persistent and that finally paid off.” Facing a set of challenges during the initial stage of hiring the right team and acquiring users, starting off in Pune really helped the app creator. “Pune is great as it has a lot of engineers and good talent,” adds Pradhan.