A dad a daughter and an app
- Erwan’s 7-year-vintage daughter’s brainchild is an app available on Apple’s app shop
- Don’t make assumptions about where the most important markets for your app would be
THIS week’s column is ready a person I met in the course of Echelon, the nearby startup convention that was currently held in Singapore.
It turned into an impromptu meeting, the type I love fine, arranged by way of a mutual acquaintance due to the fact he notion it became a pretty cool tale that I would really like.
And adore it I did.
The guy in query is Erwan Macé, the French founding father of Bitsmedia, a Singapore-primarily based cell application development corporation he had began in 2009 and to which he back full-time after leaving Google in June 2012.
Bitsmedia might be excellent known for Muslim Pro, a famous app that gives prayer instances and make contact with to prayers for Muslims.
The app also functions the entire Quran with Arabic script, phonetics, translations and audio recitations, in addition to a Qibla locator, an Islamic Hijri calendar, a map of halal restaurants and mosques.
Since its launch to app stores in April closing yr, it has garnered extra than eleven million downloads from around the arena.
Erwan says that with a million lively each day customers, Malaysia is considered one of the biggest markets for the app. However, the pinnacle spot is occupied by means of France.
He says the biggest lesson he learnt with the app turned into no longer to make assumptions approximately in which the biggest markets might be. He idea initially that it would be famous and used specially in Muslim-majority countries.
“I then realised that in Muslim-majority international locations, it’s easy to discover facts consisting of prayer times and listening to the decision to prayer because of the quantity of mosques.
“But whilst in international locations in which Islam isn't the dominant religion, the app is maximum needed as humans will rely upon it for correct statistics,” Erwan adds.
As insightful because it become to talk about Muslim Pro, that wasn’t the tale that caught my attention.
When I encountered Erwan, it were handiest over every week after his modern-day app – Mini Hug – had hit the Apple app store.
Mini Hug is an app that facilitates keep tune of the variety of hours and the sorts of activities dad and mom and their children have interaction in.
Parents can accumulate factors thru every activity finished with their child and allow the app music what sports have received the maximum or least attention.
Erwan didn’t provide you with the concept for the app, he simply coded what was the brainchild of his seven-yr-vintage daughter, Lia.
“I work from home maximum of the time, and with both her parents at home, our daughter was hoping to assist her friends and different kids revel in the same kind of privileged time she receives to spend with us,” he says.
Hearing him inform the tale of the app’s origins, you can actually’t assist but smile over his sheepish guilt approximately at first delaying work at the app for a 12 months, and then trying to delegate it to every other developer.
“My daughter gave me a glance and stated, ‘No papa, I need you to do it,’ after I recommended getting one of my colleagues to work on it. For her, it was an different father-daughter undertaking and he or she wanted the top man, now not all people else,” he quips.
About six months of development work went into the app, with Lia giving full enter into components which include layout and what number of points each hobby gets offered.
Its call is also any other element young Lia can take credit for.
“I concept since it turned into an app for her, I would call it ‘LiaApp’ or something like that and she or he instructed me that turned into a horrible name, suggesting ‘Mini Hug’ as an alternative,” Erwan shares.
Since its launch, the app has obtained some hundred downloads, with feedback and analytics insights already integrated into a new version pending evaluation by way of Apple.
But developing and launching the app turned into without a doubt only the first step of the assignment, with younger Lia now tasked by her parents to deal with marketing for it.
“We’ll be taking off with avenue advertising, we’re going to get some flyers revealed out and taking her to where mother and father move like Toys R Us, then encourage her to speak to the cashiers, tell them approximately the app and ask whether they are able to assist by letting her leave a few flyers,” says Erwan.
At gift the app remains a loose down load. With monetisation plans for the future for Mini Hug and another future apps, the Macé family already has a deal in region. It’ll be a good 50-50 cut up between father and daughter.
“I’m discussing monetisation along with her now. I mean she’s seven, so it’s now not like she knows everything.
“I would love to mention that she’s gifted however she’s a everyday kid. What I’m looking to do is instil in her a sense of what business is,” Erwan explains.
What approximately placing the cash aside for college tuition?
“Well, I agree with that it's far a parent’s obligation to pay for university; that association would be properly if I couldn’t come up with the money for to pay for university but I am fortunate enough a good way to.
“And I suppose that it might be unfair to inform her ‘that is all the money you made but genuinely it’s for faculty’, so I’m going to position it into an account and when she’s 18, she can spend it,” says Erwan.
Now, how cool is that?
A very belated Happy Father’s Day to all you dads available creating a difference.
This column at first appeared within the Metro Biz phase of The Star and is reprinted right here with its kind permission.
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