Excl: Homegrown Quick Polling Site Thotpad.com To Go Off Beta In A Month

Social networking startup Thotpad.com, which seeks to gather quick polls in one's peer group, is moving out of its beta phase in the next 5-7 weeks. The site which was launched last October with private invites to some users in the US, was built by two techies, Prabhas  Nayak and Vimal Tandan.

Nayak is Hyderabad-based and as per his LinkedIn profile is working with Mahindra Satyam while Tandan is Mumbai-based. The duo are looking after the designing and development part of Thotpad themselves. "We are a small team, two of us and a PR person but we are looking to expand it in a big way soon. We are already working on a mobile app for android, that apart we are looking to generate a lot of buzz by word of mouth," Tandan told Techcircle.in.

The first page of the site might seem to be inspired by Pinterest but Tandan say it is different. The user has to create a profile to be a part of Thotpad and then for anything that she/he needs opinions on, they can put up a query, suggest voting options and tag friends if needed. People can also comment and reply if they choose not to go for any of the options listed in the query.

On being asked why was US chosen as a test market for Thotpad, Tandan said, "People in India, as opposed to Internet users in the US, are not that keen to try out new things. So, using a few of my contacts decided to test the product in the US market."

The duo have not raised any funds as of now and have not yet frozen any monetisation plan either. One possibility, according to Tandan, is targeting corporates to use it as a survey tool. But there are already such DIY online survey tools available in the market. It would be interesting to see if the proposed monetisation strategy also pivots the product away from mass users. For now, it's good to see some native innovations in the social networking sector right here in India.