Tokyo-based startup Quan Inc. has invented a smartphone messaging app that allows you to communicate with others by exchanging decorated texts, pictograms, and illustrations. It’s called Lounge. The iPhone app was introduced last month, and its Android app just released earlier this week.
Other Japan-made picture decoration apps (such as Decopic and Snapeee) have been booming, especially in Asia. So Quan also expects this app to spread around the region. I conducted a brief interview with the startup’s CEO Kazuhiro Mizuno to find out more.
Could you tell us a little about your background first?
Prior to launching my startup Quan last August, I was working with a mobile/network game developer called Tekunodo, where I was in charge of administrating the development of a [successful] number-juggling game called Touch the Numbers. It has been ever downloaded more than three million times worldwide. I quit the developer [position] last July to start my own startup.
Why did you develop the LOUNGE app?
We can receive e-mails having decorated texts with the iPhone’s native e-mail app, however sending it with decorated texts is unavailable, except using mailer apps by cellphone carriers or the third parties. We’d like to give users back luxury of communications by texts. That’s one of the reason why we developed the app.
How will you monetize it?
We have no significant business plan at the moment, but we can see several possible ways. I think we’ll be able to create a variety of artistic or cute background decoration sets designed by professionals, which we can make downloadable online and sell them to the users. Second, when a user adds a company as his/her contact on the app, the company gives him/her a discount or a compilimentary coupon for their merchandise or services. In this case, Quan will receive a commision fee from the company every time the coupon is issued. Third, with the accumulation of messages being exchanged among the users, the startup will know a lot about what users is the most interested in. This may work for doing marketing business or helping ad agencies find new ways to satisfy their client needs.
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