If you know about RottenTomatoes, then you will understand what India-based Muvi.com is trying to achieve. RottenTomatoes is for Hollywood, while Muvi is for Bollywood.
Muvi is social review website that helps users to quickly search and read reviews about a Bollywood movie so they can make an educated decision whether a movie is worth watching or not. Muvi rates these movies using its own scale, called a Muvimeter.
Sanjib Parida, co-founder of Muvi, explained to me that 50 percent of the score comes from established movie critics. Another 30 percent comes from tweets, calculated using the HMM algorithm, while user reviews on the site contribute to the remaining 20 percent. And user reviews will only count if there are a minimum of seven of them.
Parida seems to be very focused on statistics, remarking:
We are constantly doing statistical analysis and shifting the number to get towards accuracy. One project which we are currently working on is the Filmy Genome where our goal is to rate a movie on 18 different parameters by at least 20 non-volunteer users and factor that into our Muvimeter score. It will roll out next weekend.
Despite being in private beta, there are already over 12,500 registered users on Muvi. It smartly allows users to give access to other users, which forces folks who want a Muvi account to converse on Facebook and thus giving Muvi a a lot of hype and mentions.
Parida also revealed that there are currently over 5,000 critics’ reviews, 5,000 users who have expressed their interest to watch at least one upcoming movie, and 1,000 users who have become fan of at least one celebrity on Muvi.
The Startup and Founders
Muvi was founded in May 2011 by Anshuman Das and Parida.
Das is a serial entrepreneur who started and sold Ecrux, an outsourcing process company, before the 2008 recession started. Meanwhile, Parida started his career as a programmer, solving big data mining problems for companies like Chevron and Shell. Parida also started Sitact, a learning platform based on artificial intelligence in 2008 but unfortunately had to fold it as he couldn’t secure any funding.
Muvi hasn’t raised any funds yet as it continues to survive by bootstrapping. When asked about current growth plans, Parida explained to me that despite Muvi being a tech company, he understands that its customer base isn’t quite so tech savvy and needs some help. He said:
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