TS Ramakrishnan joins U2opia Mobile as technology advisor

Global mobile applications firm U2opia Mobile has roped in TS Ramakrishnan as a technology advisor. In his new role, Ramakrishnan will be looking after the smartphone applications space to help drive the company's foray into the highly competitive apps space.

Prior to joining U2opia Mobile, Ramakrishnan had worked with internet giants like Facebook, Skype, Yahoo, AdMob and Oracle. He has more than two decades of experience in technology architecture and also served as an advisor to several technology startups in Silicon Valley and India. Ramakrishnan holds a BE degree in Computer Science from University of Madras and an MS in the same subject from the University of Alabama.

"The mobile applications space is highly competitive and Ramakrishnan's active guidance will help us create solutions which are highly targeted and robust," said Sumesh Menon, co-founder and CEO of U2opia Mobile.

Commenting on his new role, Ramakrishnan said, "U2opia Mobile has made significant inroads in social mobility in the last two years, especially in the emerging markets, which larger technology companies are now looking to target. Their innovative edge positions them well as they gear up to bring more products to market that tap the social opportunity and I'm thrilled to be engaging with them at this exciting stage in their journey."

U2opia was founded in 2010 by Menon and Ankit Nautiyal, and has offices in Singapore, Dubai and Delhi. The company is backed by Matrix Partners India from whom it raised an undisclosed amount in Series A in 2011. U2opia also raised an angel round from a consortium of Indian and international investors in 2010, which was used to set up offices and develop products.

U2opia's flagship product is Fonetwish, an app that powers mobile access to Facebook and Twitter without internet connection, was also launched in 2011. Fonetwish enables mobile users to access Facebook via USSD (unstructured supplementary service data) and was co-developed with the social networking major. When a user dials *325# (*fbk# for non-qwerty mobile handsets) from his handset, a menu opens, prompting him to enter him Facebook user name and password. After the one-time registration, a text menu is displayed for browsing through the content.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)