NEW DELHI: Abheek Anand, 32, was feeling a
tad sad during his Singapore Airlines flight from San Francisco, which landed
here on Tuesday morning. That's because the IIT-Delhi alumnus sold his startup Tagtile to Facebook last
Friday after "nurturing it for a year like a baby".
"We were looking for a distribution network. And Facebook was looking for a technology partner in the mobile space. What better network on the planet than Facebook," says Anand, still jet-lagged from an 18-hour flight, and clad in jeans and a check shirt.
Tagtile was bought by Facebook the same week the social networking company acquired mobile photo sharing service Instagram for a billion dollars. Anand and his co-founder Soham Majumdar, an IIT-Kanpur alumnus, are joining Facebook as product manager and engineer, respectively, with millions in their bank accounts and coveted Facebook stock options ahead of its IPO. Anand declined to disclose the amount of cash and stock Facebook paid them for the deal, but added it was the "in millions of dollars".
Tagtile was born in a Mediterranean restaurant, Fatoush, in San Francisco around Valentine's Day last year over a glass of beer. "Abed, the restaurant owner, complained that customers from deal sites such as Groupon seldom visited the restaurant again. They gave very few tips and there was no repeat buying," says Anand. "There was no way to gain knowledge about customers' preferences."
Anand, who hails from Sahibabad near Delhi, was working at Engine Yard, a cloud computing startup in the Bay Area. Son of a doctor couple, he was keen to "burn the boats" and start on his own. Ranchi-born Majumdar was working with Google as a software engineer in Mountain View, California.
"We both knew each other from the IIT gang in Bay Area. We both wanted to start up eagerly." Four angel investors came together to pool in about half-a-million dollars and Tagtile was born in March 2011.
Back in India, the parents of both founders were not too happy with Tagtile's birth. "We were never from a business family, so felt very anxious. But after they came out with their product in three months, we felt better," says Shibnath Majumdar, the father of 31-year-old Soham who is married to a Google engineer.
"We are all Facebook users. Now we feel very proud of them," adds Majumdar, who retired as a general manager at Steel Authority of India. Anand's mother Dr Reshma Anand said she was very tense in the first few months. "But at the back of my mind, I knew he would never be happy in a 'job'."
Tagtile's business model is different from that of large discount sites such as Groupon or LivingSocial. A Tagtile application can be downloaded on any Android or Apple phone. To merchants, Tagtile offers a white, cube-shaped device that can be plugged near the cashier's desk.
Source: The Economic Times
"We were looking for a distribution network. And Facebook was looking for a technology partner in the mobile space. What better network on the planet than Facebook," says Anand, still jet-lagged from an 18-hour flight, and clad in jeans and a check shirt.
Tagtile was bought by Facebook the same week the social networking company acquired mobile photo sharing service Instagram for a billion dollars. Anand and his co-founder Soham Majumdar, an IIT-Kanpur alumnus, are joining Facebook as product manager and engineer, respectively, with millions in their bank accounts and coveted Facebook stock options ahead of its IPO. Anand declined to disclose the amount of cash and stock Facebook paid them for the deal, but added it was the "in millions of dollars".
Tagtile was born in a Mediterranean restaurant, Fatoush, in San Francisco around Valentine's Day last year over a glass of beer. "Abed, the restaurant owner, complained that customers from deal sites such as Groupon seldom visited the restaurant again. They gave very few tips and there was no repeat buying," says Anand. "There was no way to gain knowledge about customers' preferences."
Anand, who hails from Sahibabad near Delhi, was working at Engine Yard, a cloud computing startup in the Bay Area. Son of a doctor couple, he was keen to "burn the boats" and start on his own. Ranchi-born Majumdar was working with Google as a software engineer in Mountain View, California.
"We both knew each other from the IIT gang in Bay Area. We both wanted to start up eagerly." Four angel investors came together to pool in about half-a-million dollars and Tagtile was born in March 2011.
Back in India, the parents of both founders were not too happy with Tagtile's birth. "We were never from a business family, so felt very anxious. But after they came out with their product in three months, we felt better," says Shibnath Majumdar, the father of 31-year-old Soham who is married to a Google engineer.
"We are all Facebook users. Now we feel very proud of them," adds Majumdar, who retired as a general manager at Steel Authority of India. Anand's mother Dr Reshma Anand said she was very tense in the first few months. "But at the back of my mind, I knew he would never be happy in a 'job'."
Tagtile's business model is different from that of large discount sites such as Groupon or LivingSocial. A Tagtile application can be downloaded on any Android or Apple phone. To merchants, Tagtile offers a white, cube-shaped device that can be plugged near the cashier's desk.
Source: The Economic Times
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