Stopwatch: Indian startups race to help you save time with apps for Apple Watch

The Apple Watch may never become an iconic product like the iPhone. What it shares with the iPhone, however, is the rush to build apps for the smartwatch.

In a memo to employees before the Apple Watch went on sale last Friday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said “more than 1,000 apps were submitted in just four days when the app store started accepting them, and the rate of submissions has only been climbing since then.” Over 3,000 apps were already available on the app store for the Apple Watch by the time it hit the market.

Ultimately, it’s the apps and their compatibility with the iPhone which will differentiate the Apple Watch from other smartwatches. Many apps come pre-loaded from Apple, but the startup and developer community are working overtime to build third party apps too.

Whether these are original apps for the watch or adaptations of similar phone apps, it’s a paradigm shift for developers because using a watch is very different from using a phone.

A dashboard on your wrist

Indian business software maker Zoho, for instance, has put out apps with features that extend their existing products. On a phone or a laptop, these apps can take time to do their jobs while it take seconds to execute them on the smartwatch.

Zoho Expense is a product that helps manage expense accounts. Trip mileage is an important part of tracking expenses. Now, users can just tap their Apple Watch at the start and end of a trip. The mileage will go into the Zoho Expense account. Similarly, the smartwatch can make time-tracking easier on projects that are supported by Zoho Books.

Raju Vegesna, chief evangelist of Zoho, explains how the time factor is vital in figuring out how to make smartwatch-friendly apps:

If you have to work on something for a few hours, a computer is the right tool. For a few minutes, a smartphone is the right tool, and if you have just a few seconds, smartwatch is the right tool. We shouldn’t expect people to spend several minutes continuously on their watches or several hours on their smart phones. Each of these tools has a role and we will see several unique use cases that will develop for the smartwatch, just like we have seen with smartphones.

Mumbai startup Cynapse too has built a business app for the Apple Watch. Called Numerics, it is a dashboard app that tracks key performance metrics from various cloud services.

“Since the invention of wristwatches we have been glancing at them to track time – a changing number that is important to everyone. We created Numerics for the Apple Watch because we believe the logical step for a smartwatch is to enable its user to track other changing numbers that are more personal and uniquely relevant to the user,” says Apurva Roy Choudhury, CEO of Cynapse.