Ankit Gupta is the co-founder of Alphonso Labs. He graduated from IIT Bombay with a bachelors in Computer Science in 2008. He achieved an All India Rank of 3 in the examinations for entrance into the IITs, one of the toughest in the world. In 2010, he received a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University. Ankit studied Artificial Intelligence during his Masters and loves writing recommendation algorithms. A true code junkie, he once woke up at 5 in the morning to compete in a TopCoder competition; on a vacation. Ankit likes taking long walks, listening to Alternative Folk, watching Quentin Tarantino movies and wearing free tshirts. When not coding, Ankit can be found thinking of new business models for the Music Industry and avoiding cookies. You can reach him at ag@alphonsolabs.com or @gankit

Check out http://www.alphonsolabs.com for more information.

You are the quintessential startup success story in that your project right out of a Standford  course has become a runaway success in the iPad market.  How did you hit upon this great idea?

My partnership with my co-founder Akshay started last summer. Both of us were doing independent startups but got together every once-in-a-while to chat about ideas and share experiences. In the fall quarter, we did a project together for a data visualization course and found that we work really well with each other. Both of us were going to be done with our course requirements in winter. So, we decided to do something wild and try to start a company in Spring.

We started brainstorming tons of ideas across several spaces; from travel to shopping to iphone apps to clean energy. We eventually narrowed down to four ideas one of which was a  news aggregator. Both of us had personal frustrations with our news reading experience - I had my google reader account with tons of feeds; but it seemed like a second inbox. Akshay used to go to each website every day opening multiple tabs in his browser. We were very interested in designing a product that could not only collect all your news sources in one place but also  have a fun and inviting reading experience. When the iPad was released , we felt it was the perfect platform for our application.

To what do you attribute the success of Pulse?

I don't know if you would call this a success - but its definitely a good start. I think there are several factors  helped us get to where we are today - finding the right team, hard work and coffee:-). But, something that we really benefited greatly from was the design process. Akshy and I have taken several classes at the design school at Stanford. Having learned the design process in class, we tried to apply the same principles to making this application. We did a lot of user interviews, trying to find the real needs in their news reading experience. We created a lot of prototypes, trying them out with the users before jumping into development. At every stage of the product, we kept testing with users, kept iterating. We used to work in the wonderful  Palo Alto cafes developing the app. Since the iPad was very new, a lot of people came up to us asking us about the iPad, how did we like it. They got very excited when we gave it to them and allowed them to play with it. They would discover Pulse and start using it. Watching them use the app gave us a lot of insight into how we could iterate and improve. The user feedback went from, "this is horrible" to, "does this come preloaded with the iPad". Listening to users, taking constant feedback and fearlessly iterating (even with a huge user base) has helped us a lot along the way.

Steve jobs mentioned your app by name. Why do you think he considered it important to do so?

I think only Steve jobs knows why he does what he does. I think he was just introducing some of the cool apps that had recently released on the store. But, that was a very special moment. Getting 7 seconds of limelight from him reinforced our belief in our product. It motivated us to work even harder to improve it.

New York times charged you with copyright infringement and asked you to take the app down. Why do you think
they made this move?

To be frank, we don't really know. They didn't come to us. They contacted Apple directly to voice their concerns and apple took us down. We don't know why we came back on as well.

Could you tell us a little about Alphonso Labs?

Alphonso Labs is a small and fast paced company developing innovative mobile applications. My co-founder Akshay Kothari and I really love mangos; and alpohonso mangos are our favorite and hence the name. Since the domain name www.alphonsolabs.com was also available, we decided to take it.

We are expanding rapidly; we have now hired a full time engineer and an intern. We love building apps that solve real problems and deliver real value in people's lives. And we try to do it fast. Our first product was Pulse on the iPad. We released Pulse for the iPhone last month and now, released it on Android last week.

It seems  like you have hit the rollercoaster ride of a startup really early. How have you enjoyed the ride so far?

I can't imagine doing anything else in the whole world. Its a huge learning experience. Designing and developing a real product was part of the challenge. How to market it, distribute it, legal issues, accounting, finance - all aspects that are a part of every business - was a beast in itself. Something new happens every day. I get most satisfied when I read feedback emails from people on how much they love Pulse :)

From your vantage point what technologies are you most excited about?

On the software side, I am really excited about HTML5. It allows web applications to be highly interactive and comes very close to the experience you have with native apps. On the hardware side, I am looking forward to Android tablets. A lot of people need good tablets but can't afford the iPad (or don't like Apple's closed system). They will really open up the market and make building apps for tablets that much more interesting.

What are your hopes for the future?

 In the short term, we are going to continue building the product and hope that more and more people like it; use it every day. There is a lot to be done in the news space, especially on mobile devices. We think of 10 new ideas everyday and are trying to implement them as fast as we can.

In the long term though, I really want to go back to India and start something there. There is a lot of potential to do many interesting things. I hope to take my learnings from Alphonso Labs and apply them to something important back home.

Anything else you would like to share?

If you haven't watched Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech yet, please google it. Even if you don't aim to start something yourself, it will be extremely inspirational. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you

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