WhatsApp killed his last startup. Now he’s made a new kind of messaging app

With messaging on everyone’s minds, I woke up this morning and thought to myself that it would be nice to interview Deepak Ravindran, founder of the recently-funded chat app Lookup. I shot him an email, brushed my teeth, and came back to a response: “Can we do it now?”

This seems to be Deepak’s attitude with everything – from the minute we got on our call, he leapt into conversation. “WhatsApp killed my first business,” he started. “It was inspirational.” Deepak’s first business, Innoz, was an SMS-based search engine that had over 135 million active users. In 2013, it was listed in India’s version of the Guinness Book of World Records, Limca, as the world’s largest offline search engine.

Deepak with Biz Stone

“I was on the plane back when I heard about Facebook’s US$22 billion acquisition of WhatsApp,” he reminisces. “All that for a company that wasn’t even profitable at the time. I was fascinated.” With the inordinate cost of text messaging and WhatsApp’s proliferation into India, the acquisition signaled certain death for Deepak’s business idea. Once he reached home, WhatsApp was everywhere he looked. “My mother and father were using WhatsApp,” he remembers. “It was when my mother was chatting with our local grocer in Manglish [an amalgamation of Kerala’s official language Malayalam and English] about getting deliveries that the idea for Lookup struck.”

With Lookup, people can chat directly with business owners. This is done without revealing identities. “I use WhatsApp to communicate with my friends,” Deepak explains. “Can you imagine using the same platform to forward chain messages and ask your local store owner if he has toilet paper?”

And, what if WhatsApp starts an initiative that integrates payments and customer engagement? “Won’t happen,” answers Deepak. “I’m a stern believer in the fact that it will remain and flourish as a personal tool of communication.”

The startup yesterday announced it has raised US$2.5 million in funding from a diverse group of investors including Global Founders Capital, a fund started by the guys behind Rocket Internet, Catamaran Ventures, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy’s private investment firm, and Khosla Impact, Vinod Khosla’s social enterprise fund. The list also coincidentally – or, maybe, purposefully – included Biz Stone, Twitter co-founder and entrepreneur behind another one of Innoz’s competitors, Jelly.

The new funding will be used to enhance the startup’s existing technology and expand its customer base. “In Bangalore, 100 million in funding is the new million,” laughs Deepak. “We’ve got exactly how much we needed. There was no need for any more.”

Fine tuned for modern small business owners

When someone asks a business a question on Lookup, he or she is directed to either a human at a call center or a robot. About 70 percent of queries are dealt with by humans while the rest are automated, explains Deepak. “We’re trying to automate that even further.” Inquiries about things like store timings are automated, while humans answer inquiries that require real-time information, like whether a product is in stock.

Lookup also includes a “missed call” feature, a popular tactic for businesses trying to work with low-income consumers in India. If a shop owner sends a missed call to “7676-Lookup”, a person from Lookup’s call center immediately calls him back. Shop owners also get a free year-long subscription to the premium customer service led by Lookup’s mascot, a parrot named “Buddy”. “Buddy can get shopkeepers to the point where they don’t even need to be available to answer questions,” explains Deepak.

Chatterboxes