Could this be the most intelligent phonebook app yet?

It’s self-updating and removes duplicates for worry-free contacts storage.

After deciding not to prolong his investment banking career, Niranjan Rao, 32, found 6degrees with Bangalore-based mobile technology expert Arun Samudrala, 35, in December last year. They aimed to solve what they believe are some ‘critical’ pain points in the mobile space.

6degrees is a self-funded startup running on the founders' resources. It claims to be about giving people a chance to make the best of their personal networks - to be able to stay connected without falling prey to the temporariness of transient identities such as phone numbers and email addresses.

6degrees is the self-updating phonebook that helps you verify your friends' details, cleans duplicates, integrates your social networks and backs itself up. It is a contact directory app which helps solve a common problem of losing contacts between friends, etc.

According to Niranjan, 6degrees is formed by a rare, balanced blend of people with skills from different backgrounds. Its core strength comes from the networking effect - how it creates a Live Network between your phonebook and those of your friends.

Overall, 6degrees claims to solve the problem of unintelligent phonebooks: not being able to update your friends when you change your contacts, not being able to recognize your friends' various social profiles on the various networks, and ultimately losing touch with people.

With 6degrees, users can update contact details on chosen friends' phones remotely by simply updating their own phone. Similarly, friends can update their details on a user’s phone by simply updating their own phones.

Users can download 6degrees and immediately start checking if their contact list is up-to-date or not. Perhaps its most exciting feature is the people-finder feature, where they can search for people on the network, see how they’re connected to each other, and get introduced through mutual friends - all in a highly private, secure manner, unlike existing social networks.

“We're inviting mobile handset brands/ device makers to try out 6degrees as an alternate phonebook - it makes their phones better and more intelligent. We're also able to benefit telcos in Asia by helping them provide a massively useful and relevant service to their users,” said Niranjan.

6degrees just won the Singapore leg of the Worldwide Startup Competition Seedstars World for early-stage startups in all emerging markets and fast-growing startup scenes .6degrees will fly to Switzerland next February to compete at the Grand Final with the regional winners of over 30 countries. 

Niranjan is based in Singapore and is an engineer-MBA by academic qualification. He has 8 years of experience in investment banking, including stints at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. Niranjan is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Arun Samudrala is a hard-specialist techie with 14 years of experience in the mobile/networks space, including 8 in Silicon Valley. Arun believes that good technology comes from high-quality people having high-quality conversations.​
 

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